As traders awaited the latest government inventory data to help gauge the supply/demand balance, a small increase in weather-driven demand expectations helped natural gas futures cut into the previous session’s losses in early trading Friday. 

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

After dipping 5.5 cents Thursday, the December Nymex contract was up 4.5 cents to $3.021/MMBtu at around 8:45 a.m. ET Friday.

For this week’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage report, releasing a day later than usual on account of the Veterans Day holiday, expectations have clustered around a small withdrawal from U.S. gas stocks for the period ended Nov. 6. However, the range of predictions shows some observers expecting EIA to reveal a modest injection when it reports at 10:30 a.m. ET.

A Bloomberg survey arrived at a...