Thursday, January 23rd saw the front-month NYMEX Natural Gas Futures Contract open at $4.001, up $0.041 compared to Wednesday’s closing price of $3.960. Trending cautiously higher to attain the intraday high of $4.048 at 10:25AM, the contract was then knocked down by a surprisingly bearish storage report having landed just outside the range of expectations. Falling to the intraday low of $3.861 at 11:45AM, prices slowly recovered throughout the afternoon as February closed slightly lower on Thursday at $3.945.
The EIA Natural Gas Storage Report published on Thursday showed a 223 BCF withdrawal from storage for the week ended January 17 – in line with the market estimate of a 245 BCF withdrawal. Total working gas in storage was reported as 2,892 BCF; 1.9% below this time last year and 0.7% above the five-year average.
As of 6:55AM this morning in Globex, WTI Crude was up $0.026; Natural Gas was down $0.109; Heating Oil was up $0.016; and Gasoline was up $0.010.
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