Natural Gas Market Note | 03.12.2026
Futures end slightly higher after unremarkable weekly storage report.
Natural gas finished slightly higher on the day with the April 2026 NYMEX natural gas futures contract ending $0.02 higher at $3.23 per MMBtu. Summer 2026 was near unchanged, while the subsequent three seasons were up between $0.02 and $0.03 per MMBtu.
Today’s natural gas storage report showed a 38 Bcf withdrawal that fell near the average of market expectations and provided little in the way of fundamental underpinning for a large price move in either direction. As we noted in our detailed storage report (Link), with the end of the withdrawal season now in focus, the market has begun to shift attention to the onset of injections and early forecasts for end-of-October inventory levels.
With comfortable inventories and mild, shoulder season weather on the horizon, one might reasonably wonder why natural gas prices have been so firm lately. One possible reason is a decline in the Net Supply (production plus imports less exports) of natural gas. As the chart below illustrates, Net Supply is down nearly 6 Bcf per day since late December due to a confluence of factors - lower production, multi-year lows in pipeline imports from Canada, and near-record LNG export volumes.
As temperatures continues to moderate and weather-driven demand reaches a seasonal low, the market will likely continue to focus more closely on the supply side of the fundamental balance with an eye toward potential storage refill paths.
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