Utilities used 72 billion cubic feet (bcf), of natural gas storage in the United States previous week used for both power & heating generation, just little less than the levels expected by industry analysts, according to govt statistics released Thursday.
According to the United States Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) weekly supply-demand data for gas, the use was greater than the 55 billion cubic feet withdrawal observed during the same week last year & the 5-year (2018-2022) average loss of 45 billion cubic feet.
For the week ending In march 17, analysts anticipated a drop of 75 billion cubic feet.
On of March 17, the Energy Information Administration’s gas storage report indicated a balance of 1.9 trillion cubic feet. This was higher by 22.7 percent over the 5-year average of 1.549 trillion cubic feet and 36.1 percent over the level of 1.396 trillion cubic feet from the previous year.
The front-month Apr gas agreement on the Henry Hub of the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading at 2.237 dollar per mmBtu, around (15:00 GMT), up 6.6 cents, or 3 percent, from Wednesday’s end, about Ten minute after the update of the data.
The U.S. has had significantly lower heating demand than typical due to an unexpectedly warm start to the winter of 2022–2023, leaving more gas in reserve than originally anticipated.
Gas prices fell from a 14-year peak of 10 per dollar metric million British thermal units in Aug to 7 dollar in Dec to 2 dollar levels since Feb in response to the heat & underwhelming storage draws.