US natural gas prices steady as market waits for federal storage report

NEW YORK: US natural gas futures held steady as the market waited for direction from a federal report expected to show utilities pulled more gas from storage than usual to heat homes and businesses during extreme cold weather last week.

Prices failed to move despite a rise in flows to Freeport LNG’s export plant in Texas after the plant shut on Tuesday and forecasts for more gas demand over the next two weeks than previously expected.

Analysts projected utilities pulled around 244 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas out of storage during the week ended Jan. 17, which was marked by extremely low temperatures.

That compares with a drop of 277 bcf during the same week last year and a five-year average draw of 167 bcf for this time of year.

Front-month gas futures for February delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange remained unchanged at $3.957 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at 8:27 a.m. EST (1327 GMT).

Analysts projected energy firms would pull over 200 bcf of gas out of storage for a third week in a row in the week ended Jan. 24 to meet the record heating demand seen this week. That drawdown would likely erase the small surplus of gas, measured over a five-year average, in inventory for the first time since January 2022.

Some analysts said storage withdrawals in January could top the current monthly record high of 994 bcf set in January 2022, according to federal energy data.

Financial firm LSEG said average gas output in the Lower 48 US states has fallen from 104.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in December to 101.9 bcfd so far in January, due mostly to freezing oil and gas wells and pipes, known as freeze-offs. That compares with a monthly record of 104.5 bcfd in December 2023.

Freeze-offs from Jan. 18-21 caused output to drop by 6.3 bcfd to a one-year low of 97.4 bcfd on Tuesday.

In past years, freeze-offs cut gas output by roughly 8.1 bcfd from Jan. 9-16 in 2024, 4.6 bcfd from Jan. 31-Feb. 1 in 2023, 15.8 bcfd from Dec. 20-24 in 2022, and 20.4 bcfd from Feb. 8-17 in 2021, according to LSEG data.

Meteorologists projected that weather in the Lower 48 states would remain mostly colder than normal through Feb. 7, with several near-normal days mixed in between Jan. 27-Feb 4.

But with milder weather coming, LSEG forecast average gas demand in the Lower 48 states, including exports, would fall from 157.0 bcfd this week to 142.2 bcfd next week. Those forecasts were higher than LSEG’s outlook on Wednesday.