It took one day, but it appeared to have finally dawned on natural gas futures traders that the latest storage data was bullish after all. Though gains were small on Friday, the June Nymex gas futures contract recovered 2.0 cents day/day to settle at $2.931. The July contract ticked up 1.7 cents to hit $2.978.

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Spot gas prices, however, continued to retreat amid the mostly mild weather pattern expected across the country for the next few days. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. slipped 7.5 cents to $2.605.

Thursday’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage data made a lot of headlines after the agency reported a 15 Bcf injection into storage inventories for the week ending April 23. That’s largely because the build was several Bcf higher than consensus.

However, what...