Friday, January 26th saw the front-month NYMEX Natural Gas Futures Contract open at $2.537, three cents below Thursday’s closing price of $2.571. In a volatile day of trading, following a near historic storage withdrawal one day prior, news from the Freeport LNG terminal sent prices tumbling early on as a train outage with limit export volumes. Falling to an intraday low of $2.424 by 10:15AM, uncertainty surrounding the contracts impending settlement this week then drove prices higher. Crossing midday at $2.506, the contract surged to an intraday high of $2.773 ahead of 2:30PM. February closed higher on Friday at $2.712. The March contract finished nearly flat at $2.712.
The EIA Natural Gas Storage Report published last Thursday showed a 326 BCF withdrawal from storage for the week ended January 19 – on par with the market estimate 331 BCF. Total working gas in storage was reported as 2,856 BCF; 4.0% above this time last year and 5.2% above the five-year average.
As of 7:35AM EST this morning in Globex, WTI Crude was down three cents; Natural Gas was down 20 cents; Heating Oil was down one cent; and Gasoline was down one cent.
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