Friday, July 18th saw the front-month NYMEX Natural Gas contract open at $3.606, $0.064 above Thursday’s closing price of $3.542. Tallying the intraday high of $3.628 by 9:15AM as bullish weather forecasts persisted, the contract was trading along $3.570 leading up to midday. Losing ground soon after 1:00PM to record an intraday low of $3.494 an hour later as the latest reports showed an increased rig count, prices recovered heading into closing. August finished higher on Friday at $3.565; up 7.6% on the week.
The EIA Natural Gas Storage Report published last Thursday posted a 46 BCF injection to storage for the week ended July 11 – in line with the market estimate of a 42 BCF injection. Total working gas in storage was reported as 3,052 BCF; 4.9% below this time last year and 6.2% above the five-year average.
As of 7:35AM this morning in Globex, WTI Crude was up $0.110; Natural Gas was down $0.184; Heating Oil was up $0.008; and Gasoline was up $0.010.
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