09:33 AM EDT, 09/15/2022 (MT Newswires) -- Benchmark natural gas fell nearly 7% early on Thursday ahead of fresh storage data after the White House reached a tentative deal between railways and their unions, averting a strike that would have halted coal shipments to power plants, forcing them to rely on gas.
Gas for October delivery was last seen down US$0.60 to US$8.51 per million British thermal units.
The drop comes after the White House announced the railways and their employees reached a deal to avoid a nationwide strike ahead of a Friday deadline, avoiding a shutdown of the country's rail network.
A strike would have cut "supplies of coal, forcing power generators to rely more heavily on natural gas at a time where demand for cooling remains elevated due to expectations for hotter-than-normal weather across the Midwest and Eastern parts of the US", Saxo Bank said in a note.
The Energy Information Administration will release its weekly look at US gas inventories later on Thursday morning.
"For today's EIA storage report, survey averages favor a build of +71-73 Bcf, slightly under the 5-year (average) of +82 Bcf. It was hotter than normal over most of the US, especially so over the West where record breaking heat was observed," NatGasWeather noted on its website.