With traders possibly worn out from the recent lack of direction in the natural gas futures market, the January contract on Wednesday unsurprisingly traded within a snug 20-cent range before closing out the regular session at $6.347, down 7.7 cents from Tuesday’s close.

Front-month futures have been trading within a $1.37 range between $5.99 and $7.36 for the last two months as the onset of colder winter weather has been largely canceled out by the healthy level of gas in storage, which topped out in mid-November at almost 3.5 Tcf. Whether the remaining part of the season can deliver an arctic punch to break the stalemate remains to be seen.

“The natural gas market continues to slump, despite some indications that the 11- to 15-day forecast period may feature some intense cold in the central U.S.,” said Tim Evans, an analyst with Citi Futures Perspective in New York. “The failure to rally on bullish news reinforces a bearish impression in any case, but this may also indicate that supply is running at a level sufficient to offset the increased heating demand. We note there also seems to be considerable supply complacency at the moment and light trading volumes, as traders have been worn out by the market’s sideways chop over the past six to eight weeks.”

In the near term, weather bulls can expect hefty natural gas demand as the weather outlook suggests cold temperatures in major energy markets. “Temps will be falling to below average in much of the U.S. in the next day or so and will then remain below average for much of the next week to 10 days, with any warm-ups to be brief,” said private meteorologist John Dee.

According to Dee’s interpretation, the greatest cold anomalies will “occur across the north-central U.S., which will bring about very high demands for heat across the northern Plains and all of the Midwest.” He added that temperatures in eastern markets will “fluctuate” over the period, but “there will be intervals when the demand for heat in the major metro areas of the northeast U.S. is high.”

Looking to Thursday morning’s natural gas storage report for the week ended Nov. 28, Evans said he is expecting an 80 Bcf withdrawal, which would be bullish compared to last year’s 66 Bcf pull for the week and the five-year average withdrawal of 45 Bcf.

Ahead of the 10:35 a.m. EST report from the Energy Information Administration, a Reuters survey of 24 industry players produced a range of withdrawals from 50 Bcf to 95 Bcf with an average pull expectation of 69 Bcf.

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