From last week's Focus on Fracking, this was written about a week before the above data was published:
The natural gas storage report from the EIA for the week ending August 28th indicated that the quantity of natural gas held in underground storage in the US rose by 35 billion cubic feet to 3,455 billion cubic feet by the end of the week, which left our gas supplies 538 billion cubic feet, or 18.4% greater than the 2,917 billion cubic feet that were in storage on August 28th of last year, and 407 billion cubic feet, or 13.4% above the five-year average of 3,048 billion cubic feet of natural gas that have been in storage as of the 28th of August in recent years....
... the 35 billion cubic feet that were added to US natural gas storage this week were in line with the forecast of a 34 billion cubic foot increase from an S&P Global Platts'' survey of analysts, but it was much less than the 77 billion cubic feet addition of natural gas to storage during the corresponding week of 2019, and also well less than the average of 66 billion cubic feet of natural gas that has been added to natural gas storage during the same week over the past 5 years.
I suppose the difference "this time" compared to 2019 and the average added during the same week over the past five years has to do with the marked decrease in oil drilling this year. Also, in past years, this is the time of year that the fill rate was starting to accelerate as summary usage was declining and operators were preparing for the winter demand. This year, the operators are starting from a much higher inventory (greater than the five-year maximum). All of this would help explain why the fill rate this past week is less than last year at this time and less than the five-week average.
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