The US Energy Information Administration on Thursday will estimate a natural gas storage injection of between 83 Bcf and 87 Bcf for the week that ended Friday, according to a consensus of analysts surveyed by Platts.
An injection within those expectations would be well above the 45-Bcf build at this time last year as well as the 59-Bcf five-year average injection, according to EIA data.
Analysts' expectations for Thursday's report ranged from from an injection of 77 Bcf to 93 Bcf.
EIA last week reported a 94-Bcf build to stocks that pushed inventories to 3.393 Tcf. Inventories are still 336 Bcf, or 9%, below the year-ago level of 3.729 Tcf, and 338 Bcf, or 9.1%, below the five-year average of 3.731 Tcf.
If the EIA report is within consensus expectations, it would boost inventories well past 3.4 Tcf and make an inventory of at least 3.5 Tcf possible by the end of the traditional refill season on October 31.
Total US demand last week was higher that in the previous week, with residential and commercial consumption up 2 Bcf/d week on week, with most of that, 1.7 Bcf/d, coming in the East, Jeff Moore, analyst at Platts unit Bentek Energy, said.
"However, temperatures remained seasonally mild compared to the historic norms, which is keeping the injection pace strong and will likely continue through the end of October and the early part of November, Moore said.
Last week also saw new record levels of production, with weekly average US dry gas production reaching 70.1 Bcf/d, Moore said.
Some of that production was offset by a higher amount of coal-fired generating capacity offline, trending at 57 GW for the seven-day moving average, Richard Hastings, an analyst with Global Hunter Securities, said.
The gas industry has refilled 2.571 Tcf since the end of March when inventories hit an 11-year low of 822 Bcf. To reach the 3.5 Tcf storage level that most analysts are expecting by the end of this month, another 107 Bcf has to be injected, or an average of 53.5 Bcf/week over the next two reporting weeks.
Refills will continue into November as weather allows, with the fall peak potentially moving above 3.6 Tcf. That, however, would still leave inventories below the 3.848 Tcf five-year average as of November 7, according to EIA data.
