Even as the weather and fundamentals outlooks appeared mostly unchanged day/day, natural gas futures probed higher in early trading Thursday, riding a wave of recent bullish momentum as the market prepared to digest the latest government inventory data. The September Nymex contract was up 4.0 cents to $2.231/MMBtu at around 8:45 a.m. ET.

AM markets

This week’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage report, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET, is expected to shed more light on the trajectory of U.S. inventories. The EIA reported last week that stocks grew by 26 Bcf to 3,241 Bcf, which compared with year-ago inventories of 2,615 Bcf and the five-year average of 2,812 Bcf.

Analyst estimates expect the latest round of EIA data covering the week ending July 31 to show stocks growing by...