Thursday, March 31st saw the May NYMEX Natural Gas Futures Contract open at of $5.606, nearly even to Wednesday’s closing price of $5.605. Ascending from an intraday low of $5.565 within minutes of 9:00AM, prices surged upward to surpass the $5.70 level by 9:30AM. Trading near $5.740 ahead of the weekly storage publication, the contract responded by jumping to a fresh two-month intraday high of $5.832 at 10:45AM, despite the season’s first storage injection. Stepping gradually lower throughout the afternoon, markets seem to be placing more weight on geopolitical factors than domestic fundamentals. May closed higher on Thursday at $5.642.
The EIA Natural Gas Storage Report published on Thursday showed a 26 BCF injection to storage for the week ended March 25 – largely in line the market estimate of 15 BCF. Total working gas in storage was reported as 1,415 BCF; 19.7% below this time last year and 14.7% below the five-year average.
As of 6:55AM EST this morning in Globex, WTI Crude was down 26 cents; Natural Gas was down seven cents; Heating Oil was up two cents; and Gasoline unchanged.
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