Coming in firmly below industry projections, the 53 Bcf weekly storage injection reported by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) Thursday for the week ended April 28 caught traders off guard and triggered an early futures rally. June natural gas hit a high of $6.990 late in the session before settling at $6.906, up an even 30 cents on the day.

Trading just a penny north of $6.500 support, June natural gas jumped 34 cents on the smallish build to trade at $6.850 just seven minutes after the report’s 10:30 a.m. EDT release. After hitting a morning high of $6.980, prompt-month natural gas as of 11:10 a.m. EDT was trading at $6.780, up 17.4 cents from Wednesday’s close.

“Thursday’s rally was sparked by two factors. First, we got a storage injection that was smaller than expected. Second, we bounced off that key $6.500 support level,” said a Washington, DC-based broker.

Another broker agreed the build was definitely smaller than expected. “I think the build — tied with technical factors — helped to decouple natural gas from crude, pushing natural gas higher as crude dropped $2.34 to close below $70/bbl,” said Steve Blair, a broker with Rafferty Technical Research in New York. June crude closed at $69.94/bbl on Thursday.

“I think the market continues to be very comfortable in this $6.50 to $7.50 range,” Blair said. “It is going to play these technical numbers back and forth until the technicals tell you that you can’t play those numbers again. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a little more upside to wrap the week up.”

Blair said crude’s fall has to do with incorrect expectations. “Crude is off big because everyone was sitting around waiting for our ninth straight week of gasoline draws on Wednesday and instead we ended up getting a build of 2.1 million.”

Consensus industry estimates for the storage report centered around a build of 66 Bcf. The ICAP derivatives auction Wednesday afternoon revealed a consensus injection of 62 Bcf.

As of April 28, working gas in storage stands at 1,904 Bcf, according to EIA estimates. Despite the smallish build, stocks are 455 Bcf higher than last year at this time and 699 Bcf above the five-year average of 1,205 Bcf.

The East region led the injection charge by depositing 29 Bcf into underground stores, while the Producing and West regions chipped in 16 Bcf and 8 Bcf, respectively.

The 53 Bcf build was a little larger than last year’s 44 Bcf injection, but smaller than the five-year average build of 64 Bcf.

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