Thursday, September 26, 2013

EIA Natural Gas Storage Report: A Big Build, Gas Drops, Sticks the Landing at $3.4020

From the EIA:

Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report
for week ending September 20, 2013.   |   Released: September 26, 2013 at 10:30 a.m.   |   Next Release: October 3, 2013

Working gas in underground storage, lower 48 states Summary text CSV JSN


Historical Comparisons
Stocks
billion cubic feet (Bcf)

Year ago
(09/20/12)
5-Year average
(2008-2012)
Region 09/20/13 09/13/13 change
(Bcf) % change (Bcf) % change
East 1,742   1,688   54  
1,914   -9.0   1,857   -6.2  
West 519   511   8  
501   3.6   469   10.7  
Producing 1,125   1,100   25  
1,149   -2.1   1,030   9.2  
   Salt 267   259   8  
230   16.1   162   64.8  
   Nonsalt 859   841   18  
919   -6.5   869   -1.2  
Total 3,386   3,299   87  
3,565   -5.0   3,356   0.9  

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is announcing changes to the format of its Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report (WNGSR) to better serve customers who make use of automated computer systems to collate information on changes in natural gas storage. Additional information on the changes to the WNGSR

Summary

Working gas in storage was 3,386 Bcf as of Friday, September 20, 2013, according to EIA estimates. This represents a net increase of 87 Bcf from the previous week. Stocks were 179 Bcf less than last year at this time and 30 Bcf above the 5-year average of 3,356 Bcf. In the East Region, stocks were 115 Bcf below the 5-year average following net injections of 54 Bcf. Stocks in the Producing Region were 95 Bcf above the 5-year average of 1,030 Bcf after a net injection of 25 Bcf. Stocks in the West Region were 50 Bcf above the 5-year average after a net addition of 8 Bcf. At 3,386 Bcf, total working gas is within the 5-year historical range.

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Here's Metro Energy Desk commentary from earlier this morning:
By Energy Metro Desk - Thu 26 Sep 2013 08:46:48 CDT
Previewing the Energy Information Administration's 9/26/13 report.
Each week, we poll 40 professional storage forecasts for our weekly Natural-Gas Storage Box Scores (as seen in each bi-weekly issue of Energy Metro Desk*). This is North America's biggest and most comprehensive natural-gas storage survey and report.

Average: +78 Bcf
Median: +79 Bcf
Range: +61 to 86 Bcf

Editors Forecast This Week: +80 Bcf


Natural Gas Storage Tealeaves for 9/26/13
It's gonna be a beefy build this week folks, no doubt about it. The weather cooperated (warmer than last year by half and warmer than the 5 year average), production cooperated (weak), imports and exports were cooperative (also weak), we didn't have any lingering holiday effects and the nuclear/total outage picture wasn't as big as originally believed last week.

What's it spell? A build bigger than last year and the five year average, that's what. We note that the average of all the big surveys this week came in at 76 Bcf while the EMD Consensus was a bit higher at 78 Bcf. We see risk to the high side this week. Around the quad, analysts were coming forward with their scrape models besting their S/D models, fairly consistently by like 10 Bcf. Don't see that very often; it made us wonder if a surprise is in the cards this week. Very possible. The overall range was pretty wide this week at 61 to 86 Bcf and the spread between the three categories we track was also fairly wide at 2.5 Bcf. It's under the 3 Bcf signal, but still, it's higher than it should be for this time of the year.

The Standard deviation was 5.5 this week. The 8 week running average is just over 4. Bentek thinks that the risk may be to the low side this week, and they are about as high as it gets -- their Flow Model came in at our HighBaller forecast of 86 Bcf and its S/d Model was lower at 79 Bcf - though still above the consensus. 80 Bcf tomorrow shouldn't surprise; over 85 Bcf, should. Lower than 75 Bcf should be somewhat of a surprise as well. We note that total outages were up 12 GW week-on-week to 46 GW, though we also note that total US power demand is down 5.8 Bcf/d to 24 Bcf/d, from the Sept. 13 to the Sept. 20 storage week, the lowest weekly average since late June. Total US population-weighted cooling degree days declined by 48 percent from the prior week, with East Region CDDs down a whopping 87%. As we said, risk to the high side. -the editor...MORE
If the futures hadn't been dropping for the last week we'd have seen a 25 cent drop on this size build. As it is it looks like a lot of the number was priced in.
5-minute chart from FinViz: