July Natural Gas Futures Rise Ahead of EIA Storage Report
Traders eye a 99 bcf build as summer heat and Qatar's Ras Laffan outage tighten balances.
July NYMEX natural gas futures gained nearly 1.5% on Wednesday (2026-06-03) and extended gains in early Thursday (2026-06-04) trading, with the market positioned ahead of the EIA's weekly storage report.4
Analysts expected a 99 billion cubic feet injection, a touch below the five-year average of 101 bcf for the week of 2026-06-01.4 The build recorded for the week ending 2026-05-25 came in at 92 bcf, already below seasonal norms.4 Consecutive lighter-than-average injections were raising the question of whether tightening storage trends could hold the bullish move that had carried front-month futures above $3 in late May 2026.1
By Friday (2026-05-29), June NYMEX natural gas settled at $2.96 per million British thermal units, gaining 2.3% for the day and about 7.4% for the week.1 The rally had been driven by above-normal temperature forecasts across much of the Lower 48 and a steady pickup in LNG feedgas flows.
Total inventories were still 6.2% above the five-year average and slightly above year-ago levels as of early June 2026, so the market faced no acute physical shortage.4 But the pace of injection was slowing just as cooling demand ramped up, a tension traders were pricing in.
The Edison Electric Institute reported U.S. electricity generation for the week ending May 30, 2026 climbed 6.4% from a year earlier.4 Over the 52 weeks through that period, power generation was running 2.18% above year-ago levels.4 Gas-fired generation remains the primary swing fuel for summer peaking, and those numbers indicated firm baseline demand.
LNG exports were also drawing on domestic supply. Weekly vessel departures reached 141 billion cubic feet for the week ending 2026-05-29, up 26 bcf on the previous week despite maintenance activity at several export facilities.1 Feedgas flows to U.S. terminals were running near record levels, up 3.2% from a year ago as of early June 2026.4
On the global side, the Ras Laffan outage continued to tighten Atlantic and Pacific LNG markets. Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City handles about 20% of global LNG supply, and roughly 17% of its export capacity was still offline after damage sustained earlier in 2026.4 That lost volume was not available to compete with U.S. cargoes, keeping pressure on European and Asian hubs and supporting the premium on American gas.
The technical picture backed the bullish case. A 50-day moving average breakout on May 21, 2026 was the first clean signal that buyers were willing to step in on pullbacks.2 The 50% retracement level at $3.145 was cited as support.4
The Strait of Hormuz disruption that briefly pushed ICE Brent crude above $119 in mid-May 2026 had since unwound.3 ICE Brent crude front-month traded at $78.23 on Monday (2026-07-13). But the geopolitical risk premium had not fully dissipated, and the Ras Laffan capacity loss remained a separate supply-side event keeping global LNG markets tighter than the domestic inventory surplus alone would suggest.4
The immediate test was the EIA storage number: a 99 bcf injection or smaller would reinforce the tightening narrative, while a materially larger build would undercut it.4