After initially probing higher, natural gas futures dipped through midday trading Wednesday. Shoulder-season conditions appeared to be offering few clear signals to push prices in either direction.

Here’s the latest:

  • May Nymex futures down 2.2 cents to $1.840/MMBtu as of 2:15 p.m. ET

Longer-dated contracts were seeing larger declines. The natural gas market enters the injection season with near-month prices at a steep contango to Winter 2024/25 contracts. According to data from NGI’s Forward Look, May Henry Hub fixed prices were recently trading at a more than $1.600 discount to December. This comes as the market is poised to exit the withdrawal season with around 2,200-2,300 Bcf in storage. The last time storage was that high at the start of injections was in 2016, when...