Thursday, April 10, 2014

Natural Gas: EIA Reports Lower than Expected Injections to Storage, Futures Do Happy Dance

Front month may's $4.6800 up .0940.
Platts' survey had the analyst estimates at between 13 billion cubic feet and 17 billion cubic feet vs. the 4 Bcf reported.

From Dow Jones:
Natural-Gas Futures Jump After Increase in Stockpiles
Natural-gas futures flipped into positive territory Thursday after U.S. inventory data showed a weaker-than-expected increase in stockpiles.

Natural-gas futures for May delivery surged 10.5 cents, or 2.3%, to $4.6910 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The market had been trading lower prior to the announcement as traders braced for the first increase of the year in stored supplies.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said the amount of natural gas in storage rose by just 4 billion cubic feet in the week ended April 4 to 826 billion cubic feet. Analysts had been expecting an average increase of 13.75 billion cubic feet, according to a survey of 20 analysts by The Wall Street Journal. The increase was less than half of the recent five-year average for the week.

With the weak first gain in stockpiles of the season, the market is questioning whether companies will be able to produce enough gas to have enough in storage at the start of the next heating season in the fall. Inventories are at the lowest level since 2003 after a severe U.S. winter prompted extraordinary demand for natural gas, which is used to heat more than half of U.S. homes. The EIA expects supplies to reach 3.422 trillion cubic feet by the end of October, which would be a nine-year low....MORE 
Today's action on the 5-minute chart from FinViz:
And the EIA:

for week ending April 4, 2014   |   Released: April 10, 2014 at 10:30 a.m.   |   Next Release: April 17, 2014

Working gas in underground storage, lower 48 states Summary text CSV JSN
    Historical Comparisons
Stocks
billion cubic feet (Bcf)
  Year ago
(04/04/13)
5-Year average
(2009-2013)
Region 04/04/14 03/28/14 net change implied flow   (Bcf) % change (Bcf) % change
East 305     310     -5     -5       648     -52.9     753     -59.5    
West 160     160     0     0       336     -52.4     297     -46.1    
Producing 361     352     9     9       691     -47.8     772     -53.2    
   Salt 68     60     8     8       168     -59.5     154     -55.8    
   Nonsalt 293     293     0     0       523     -44.0     618     -52.6    
Total 826     822     4     4       1,675     -50.7     1,823     -54.7    


...MORE