As the market prepared to price in two weeks of government inventory statistics to true up recent balance assessments, natural gas futures were trading close to even early Thursday, belying recent price swings.

After dropping as low as $3.133/MMBtu and probing as high as $3.265 in after hours trade, the December Nymex contract hovered just above even at $3.199 at around 8:50 a.m. ET, up 0.9 cents.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) at 10:30 a.m. ET is scheduled to unveil an unusual double feature in its weekly natural gas storage report, a result of a planned systems upgrade that delayed last week’s release.

Traders will thus have to weigh the balance implications of not one but two weeks of storage numbers. The first storage week chronologically is likely to...