Thursday, February 6, 2014

Natural Gas: Big Storage Withdrawal Lower Than Inflated Expectations, Futures Fall

Platts' survey of analysts had the pull at 273-277 Bcf while a couple guys guessed 300 Bcf.
The futures are up a dime at $5.13 after trading as high as $5.396.
From MarketWatch:

Natural-gas futures pare gains after EIA data
AN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Natural-gas futures on Thursday pared some gains after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that supplies of natural gas dropped 262 billion cubic feet for the week ended Jan. 31. The drop was a bit below expectations as analysts surveyed by Platts forecast a decline of between 273 billion cubic feet and 277 billion cubic feet. Total stocks now stand at 1.923 trillion cubic feet, down 778 billion cubic feet from a year ago and 556 billion cubic feet below the five-year average, the government said. March natural gas NGH14 +1.87% was at $5.07 per million British thermal units, up 4 cents, or 0.8%. It was trading at $5.11 before the data.
The withdrawal was really quite large, the 5-year average for this week is 143 billion cubic feet but this is all about the second derivative: How do you think X will react to Y's expectation?
No bets on direction at the moment.