Working gas storage in the United States as of March 31 stood at 2,051 billion cubic feet (Bcf), ending the most recent gas year around 15% above the five-year average. Responding to slightly higher prices, gas consumed in electric power generation fell 2.1 Bcf from the 2015–2016 heating season, but the drop was almost entirely offset by a 2.0 Bcf increase in US gas exports, according to data from PointLogic.
Overall gas consumption in winter 2016/17 flat-lined compared with the previous year, while dry gas production fell by 3% over that same period.
In winter 2015/16, by contrast, US natural gas inventories skyrocketed due to unseasonably mild weather. At the end the 2016 heating season U.S. gas storage inventories were near the highest on record, totaling 2,470 Bcf, or 54% higher than the previous five-year average (2011-2015). Inventories started the last year’s heating season at a record of 4,047 Bcf.
For most of 2016 and continuing into the 2016–2017 heating season, inventories remained above the previous five-year average, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report.
Analysts at EIA expect an increase in working natural gas inventories of about 1,750 Bcf through this summer’s injection season.
The resulting forecast of U.S. natural gas inventories at the end of October 2017 suggests that they will not match the record high end-of-injection-period levels set at the end of October 2016, they said in the EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).
Electric power sector consumption of natural gas are seen to decline slightly on an annual average basis and gross natural gas exports—especially liquefied natural gas exports—continue to increase.