At the transition from Q4 of last year into Q1 and the start of the new 2025 calendar year, US Lower 48 natural gas reserves were in a healthy position. After building up a healthy storage surplus throughout the summer of 2024, total storage was sitting at 3,373 BCF as of January 3^rd, just 3 BCF off from the previous year and 207 BCF ahead of the average.  An unusually cold start to the quarter along with increased LNG demand and flagging production quickly erased the surplus that had built up over the latter half of the previous year by mid-month, until by the end of January storage reserves had fallen to 208 BCF behind 2024.  By the middle of March, the year-on-year deficit had ballooned to a whopping 624 BCF.  Only in the final weeks of the quarter did the fundamentals change and storage start to close the gap with some early spring injections but still sat 491 BCF behind 2021 as of March 28^th (and 80 BCF below average). 

Figure 1. Natural Gas Storage (BCF) for Lower 48 States