Coming off losses in the previous two sessions, natural gas futures continued to slide in early trading Thursday as the market prepared to digest the latest round of government inventory data. The August Nymex contract was off 2.0 cents to $3.576/MMBtu at around 8:50 a.m. ET.

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

Ahead of this week’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage report, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET, most estimates have been pointing to an injection notably below the five-year average.

Injection estimates in a Bloomberg poll produced a median of 29 Bcf. Predictions ranged from 19 Bcf to 47 Bcf. Results of a Reuters survey, meanwhile, ranged from injections of 22 Bcf to 64 Bcf, with a median build of 29 Bcf.

NGI’s model predicted a 28 Bcf build for the report, which covers the week ended July...