US natural gas futures ended little changed on Friday as forecasts for milder weather over the next two weeks offset the bullish influence of a much smaller-than-expected storage build. After jumping almost 5 percent on Thursday due to the small build, front-month gas futures on Friday eased 0.9 cent, or 0.3 percent, to settle at $2.797 per million British thermal units.
That kept the front-month almost unchanged on the week, ending up just 0.2 percent, after Thursday's big gain erased losses earlier this week.
Cheniere Energy Inc was expected to shut both operating trains at its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas export terminal for maintenance over the next several days, according to company reports and analysts. That outage would reduce demand at the facility by about 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day for four weeks.
Although the latest weather forecasts continued to call for above-normal temperatures over the next two weeks, traders said most of the heat was expected to be concentrated in the next day or two.
That should reduce air conditioning demand and cut the amount of gas burned by the power sector from around 37 billion cubic feet per day on Friday to around 30 bcfd for much of the next two weeks, according to Thomson Reuters data.
The traders, however, noted that both the US and European weather models slightly boosted temperatures expected during the week of September 18 compared with forecasts earlier in the week.
The US Energy Information Administration on Thursday said utilities added 36 bcf of gas into storage during the week ended September 2, well short of the consensus estimate for a build of 43 bcf from analysts in a Reuters poll.
That compared with injections of 51 bcf in the prior week, 78 bcf a year earlier and a five-year average build of 64 bcf.
Analysts said the lower-than-expected stock build was likely related to production shut-ins in the Gulf of Mexico area due to Tropical Storm Hermine last week.
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