Similar to expectations, today's inventory fell 107 BCF to 2,423. This puts January on a path to withdraw nearly 1 Trillion feet from storage and exit January with between 1.8 and 1.9 TCF in storage.
Large draws are expected for the next two storage reports, with significant cold ahead. Today's weather report and inventory combine to lower the estimate of working gas in storage at the end of winter to about 1.1 TCF. This should be very supportive of gas in the near term, but the forward strip will continue to trade based on supply expectations, as today's market data reflect. While both February and March contracts were higher, April and beyond were trading just a few cents up.
Looking ahead to the prior year and 5 year comps, we see that they are going to be easy to beat, noting that they fall below -150 as we enter February:
