As traders and analysts awaited a full accounting from the latest government inventory data of last week’s deep freeze, natural gas futures were up slightly early Thursday. The April Nymex contract was up 1.0 cent to $2.805/MMBtu at around 8:50 a.m. ET.

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

This week’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage inventory report, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET, will help the market to gauge the supply/demand impacts of the intense polar blast that drove record-setting price spikes in the physical market last week.

Estimates have been wide ranging, reflecting the difficulty in assessing the widespread power outages that impacted gas production, pipelines, plants, storage facilities and other infrastructure. 

A Bloomberg survey of eight analysts produced estimates ranging from...