Putting the first, albeit small, chink in the rosy natural gas storage picture, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Thursday morning that 68 Bcf was put into underground storage for the week ended Sept. 17. The weekly storage injection was considered largely bullish when compared to historical data for the week, but most industry-watchers had been expecting a smaller-than-normal injection because of the impact of Hurricane Ivan on Gulf of Mexico production.

Despite trolling much lower following the storage report, October futures settled at $5.564, down only 6.5 cents on the day. As a result of overestimating Ivan’s takeaway in the report, October futures plummeted from $5.66 to $5.52 during trading conducted just after the 10:30 a.m. (EDT) releases of the EIA storage report. As of 10:54 a.m., October was down 24.9 cents from Wednesday’s close to trade at $5.38. However, the prompt month slowly worked its way back up from there.

“Today was a pretty wild day,” said Tom Saal of Miami-based Commercial Brokerage Corp. “The report came out [in the] morning and was a little bit on the bearish side. I think speculators were looking for the number to be a little lower. The market rebounded pretty well after that, though.”

Saal noted that even though the report was just a little on the bearish side, the jury is still out on the total extent of Ivan’s damage and the amount by which it will affect the storage refill.

As to where the market is headed now, Saal said that’s hard to predict. “I thought we would get a rally off of that $4.50 area, but the question is whether it is sustainable after the funds kind of get out of their positions,” he said. “I think that is where we are right now. Is there enough momentum here for the funds to go higher in price? I don’t know the answer. As for the charts, there are some mixed signals whether there is enough momentum here or not.”

The industry knew there would be some Ivan impact in Thursday’s report for the week ended Sept. 17, but most believe there will likely be a much bigger impact in next week’s report. Many of the industry’s injection expectations for this report were within the 58 to 85 Bcf range. The 68 Bcf injection fell far short of last year’s 100 Bcf injection and the 82 Bcf five-year average build.

Working gas in storage now stands at 2,942 Bcf, according to EIA estimates. Stocks are now 223 Bcf higher than last year at this time and 188 Bcf above the five-year average of 2,754 Bcf. The East region contributed 51 Bcf, while the West and Producing regions chipped in 9 Bcf and 8 Bcf, respectively.

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