Thursday, March 20^th marked the Spring Equinox, the halfway point between winter and summer, and the start of a new season. It also gave us the latest EIA storage print for lower 48 natural gas storage volumes as of March 14^th. After a winter of withdrawals, the start of spring brought a return to net injections, with 9 BCF of gas going into storage. The early switch to storage injections shook up the bullish story and caught the market by surprise. After the latest release from the EIA, the Nymex (April) prompt month dropped by approximately 24 cents. With uncertainty swirling, let’s get our bearings on the demand side of the natural gas equation. With new LNG capacity, shifts and power burns, and a new storage landscape, it’s back to square one as we start the journey of Summer 2025.

Figure 1 | EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Volumes

This past winter generated plenty of demand for natural gas. Despite record-setting global warmth in January, much of the US was colder than normal, especially in the Mountains and SE, with a couple dramatic storms in the NE. This gave us the strongest drawdown in storage volumes of the past three years, seen from December to February in the figure above.