G&A Predicts 165 Bcf Withdrawal From Storage

The January NYMEX contract is trading near $4.57/MMBtu this morning, roughly flat to yesterday’s close but well off last week’s spike above $5 as the extreme cold continues to bleed out of the late-December outlook. Forecast models have shed heating demand at the margin, and with them some of the bullish momentum, even though conditions remain seasonally chilly. Today’s fundamental balances show dry gas production at 107.7 Bcf/d with Canadian imports sitting at 6.5 Bcf/d, putting total US supply close to 114.3 Bcf/d. On the demand side, ResComm demand is still stout at roughly 40.9 Bcf/d and LNG feedgas is holding a very strong 18.8 Bcf/d, keeping total demand at 136.3 Bcf/d and reinforcing a solid withdrawal-season balance as long as weather doesn’t turn decisively milder.

Analysts see a very wide 135–195 Bcf range for this week’s EIA report with Gelber & Associates landing at a 165 Bcf withdrawal for the week ended December 5. With our number, stocks would finish the week closer to 3.758 Tcf, about 115 Bcf (≈3.2%) above the five-year average near 3.643 Tcf and roughly 16 Bcf (≈0.4%) below last year. In infrastructure news, Trinity Gas Storage reached FID on a Phase II expansion that will add at least 13 Bcf of working gas capacity at its East Texas reservoir field by August 2026, plus two new pipeline interconnects and extra compression. The project will lift deliverability to well over 1 Bcf/d and is already drawing longer-term commitments from power generators and emerging data-center loads, underscoring how Gulf Coast storage is evolving into a key buffer for increasingly peaky Texas gas demand.

Nigeria’s NNPC Pushes Output Toward 2 Million b/d Goal

Front-month WTI trades near $58.19/bbl this morning, mostly unchanged from yesterday’s $58.25 close, as the market digests mixed macro signals against a still-comfortable inventory backdrop. On the supply side, Nigeria’s state-run NNPC reports that production from its upstream arm has climbed to a record 355,000 b/d, up 52% from about 203,000 b/d in 2023, helped by taking over assets like OML 11 and ramping joint-venture output at OML 42. National crude and condensate production averaged roughly 1.6 million b/d in October and has briefly touched 1.83 million b/d, bringing Abuja closer to its targets of 2 million b/d by 2027 and 3 million b/d by 2030. The rebound from years of theft, sabotage, and underinvestment adds incremental light-sweet barrels to the Atlantic Basin and, if sustained, should help cap premiums on grades such as Bonny Light even as localized outages and OPEC+ policy keep a modest floor under regional differentials.