Coming off a soaring rally in the previous session, natural gas futures gave back a chunk of those gains in early trading Thursday as the market looked ahead to a seasonally light withdrawal in the latest government inventory data.

The March Nymex contract was down 8.3 cents to $1.690/MMBtu at around 8:50 a.m. ET. April was off 7.9 cents to $1.784.

Futures surged higher Wednesday in the wake of Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the major Lower 48 natural gas producers, revealing substantial year/year output cuts in its latest guidance.

That sent a clear bullish signal to a market languishing at discounted levels amid mild winter weather and oversupply concerns.

EBW Analytics Group analyst Eli Rubin pointed to the 27.0-cent swing between Tuesday’s pre-rally low and...