Consensus is that the Energy Information Agency will report a 62 billion cubic feet (BCF) build in natural gas inventories for the week ended July 15. Low side estimates were 57 BCF and high side was 80 BCF. The five year average for this week of the year is 67 BCF.
Assuming last week’s numbers were correct, inventories should be sitting at 2.673 trillion cubic feet. Total inventory is 2.3% below the five year average and 2.1% below 2010. Even with the light injections, the EIA has said that inventories could surpass 3.8 trillion cubic feet at the end of October due to high production rates and milder summer weather relative to last year.
The EIA is scheduled to release its storage data Thursday at 10:30 a.m. EDT. If we continue to see extreme heat and light injections we will certainly see business electricity rates trend up. Relatively speaking we remain at historically low levels.
