As traders and analysts prepared to examine the latest round of government inventory data in the context of ongoing balance impacts from the Freeport liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal outage, natural gas futures retreated in early trading Thursday.

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

The July Nymex contract was off 13.3 cents to $6.725/MMBtu at around 8:50 a.m. ET. August was down 13.4 cents to $6.738.

Estimates ahead of the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage report, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET, show expectations centering around a build in the 60s Bcf for the week ended July 17.

Reuters polled 13 analysts, whose storage injection estimates ranged from 56 Bcf to 76 Bcf, resulting in a median increase of 66 Bcf. A Bloomberg survey produced a lower median projection of 59 Bcf, though the...