With the market continuing to balance near-term oversupply against longer term bullishness, natural gas futures moved slightly lower at the front of the curve in early trading Tuesday.

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

The May Nymex contract was down 1.7 cents to $1.774/MMBtu at around 8:45 a.m. ET. June was off 1.7 cents to $2.048.

A recently updated outlook from Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH) modeled tighter balances for 2024 and 2025. This tightening reflects both lower supply this year and a more bullish timeline for the startup of pending LNG export facilities, namely the Plaquemines project, TPH analyst Matt Portillo said in a recent note.

TPH estimated roughly 3.85 Tcf in storage by the end of the 2024 injection season, with the potential for inventories to finish below the five-year average by...