Although front-month Nymex natural gas (NG1) for February delivery is edging up +0.15% in today’s premarket, it had finished -8.2% to $2.490/MMBtu on Monday, January 29, posting the front-month's third-lowest settlement value so far this year, while the most-active March contract also ended lower, by -5.6%, to $2.05/MMBtu, the lowest reading of the most-active contract finish since April 13 of last year.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported last week that the U.S. domestic natural gas inventories posted their largest weekly increase in nearly 3 years. Cushing's storage inventories increased by 326 billion cubic feet, 142 billion cubic feet above the 5-year average. Freeport LNG also reported that one of its 3 gas liquefaction stations will be out of service for a month after severe cold weather in January caused the production-damaging power disruptions, which eventually required maintenance and caused the system's feed gas utilization to drop by 45% to 55%.

The month-long outage is expected to lead to some easing of market conditions during the plant closures, with approximately 1 billion cubic feet per day of domestic supply on the market and lead to a supply glut. Freeport Texas LNG reportedly U.S. natural gas futures fell the most in nearly two weeks as factory outages boosted domestic supply and forecasts of mild weather clouded the outlook for heat demand.