As traders awaited an unseasonably light withdrawal from government inventory, natural gas futures moved modestly higher early Thursday to trim some of the heavy losses recorded in recent sessions.

The January Nymex contract was up 2.9 cents to $2.833/MMBtu at around 8:42 a.m. ET.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is set to reveal a much lighter-than-normal early winter withdrawal in its latest weekly natural gas storage report, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET, surveys show.

Estimates submitted to Reuters ranged from a withdrawal of 31 Bcf to an injection of 7 Bcf, with a median draw of 14 Bcf. Bloomberg’s poll spanned estimates of a 17 Bcf draw to a 10 Bcf build and produced a median 9 Bcf withdrawal. The average from The Wall Street Journal’s survey came out...