A consensus of analysts surveyed by Platts expects the US Energy Information Administration on Thursday will estimate a natural gas storage injection of between 94 Bcf and 98 Bcf for the reporting week that ended October 17.
An injection within those expectations would be above the 86 Bcf build at this time last year as well as the 70 Bcf five-year average, according to EIA data.
The wider range of analyst expectations for this Thursday's report spanned from an injection of 79 Bcf to 103 Bcf.
Last week, the EIA reported a 94 Bcf injection that pushed inventories up to 3.299 Tcf. Inventories are still 344 Bcf, or 9.4%, below the year-ago level of 3.643 Tcf, and 362 Bcf, or 9.9%, below the five-year average of 3.661 Tcf.
Demand last week "looked fairly similar to the previous week," with a slight decline in power burn of 700,000 Mcf/d that was partially offset by a an uptick in industrial demand of 300,000 Mcf/d week-over-week, said Jeff Moore, storage analyst at Platts unit Bentek Energy.
Temperatures across the US remained mild last week and kept demand fairly suppressed, which along with record production levels helped to keep injection activity well above historic levels, Moore added. Bentek data shows US dry gas production hit a new record above 70 Bcf/d last weekend.
"Allowing for the modest demand-softening presence of the Columbus Day holiday last week (affecting mostly government offices), we think the overall amount of gas injected will have risen slightly compared to last week's reported injection," said Martin King, analyst at FirstEnergy Capital.
Analyst Richard Hastings at Global Hunter Securities noted that heating degree days were "a whopping 21 degree days below normal" last week.
"If it were not for the higher outage rates in coal power generation, combined with seasonal maintenance in nuclear and diminished hydroelectric power generation in the Pacific [Northwest], then we might have assumed a higher contribution to storage," Hastings said.
The gas industry has refilled 2.477 Tcf since the end of March when inventories hit an 11-year low of 822 Bcf. In order to reach the 3.5 Tcf level most analysts are expecting by the end of this month, another 201 Bcf has to be injected, or an average of 67 Bcf/week over the next three reporting weeks.
Refills will likely continue into November as weather allows, analysts agree, with the fall peak potentially reaching past 3.6 Tcf. However, that would still leave inventories below the 3.848 Tcf five-year average as of November 7, according to EIA data.
