Natural gas futures hovered close to unchanged early Wednesday as modest late-season cooling remained supportive for a market working through a significant storage glut exiting winter.

NGI Morning Natural Gas Price & Markets Coverage

After turning in two straight positive sessions to open the work week, including a 4.1-cent gain on Tuesday, the April Nymex contract was trading flat at $1.744/MMBtu as of 8:50 a.m. ET.

The front month went as high as $1.769 Tuesday as prices got a boost from “expanding end-of-winter heating demand and consistently weak daily production scrapes,” EBW Analytics Group analyst Eli Rubin observed.

Physical prices at Henry Hub also finished stronger on the day Tuesday, picking up 4.0 cents to average $1.575, according to NGI’s Daily Gas Price Index.

Stronger weather-driven demand relative...