By Ryan Dezember

A record volume of natural gas was withdrawn from domestic stock piles last week when Americans cranked up the heat during the winter storm that froze much of the country.

The Energy Information Administration said that 360 billion cubic feet of gas was sucked out of storage facilities in the Lower 48 states to meet historic demand. Temperatures that froze gas fields from West Texas to Appalachia and blocked up wells with ice exacerbated the need to tap stored gas.

The withdrawal flipped U.S. gas stockpiles from a 5% surplus to the five-year average inventory to a small deficit, with more big drawdowns ahead given the ongoing arctic blast.

Last week's record drawdown narrowly topped the old all-time high of 359 billion cubic feet, set in January 2018. EIA records go back to 2010, before which U.S. natural-gas consumption was much lower than it is now.

Natural-gas prices had dropped sharply this winter in anticipation of abnormally warm weather leaving a glut of unburned gas. When forecasts started to predict the current cold spell, prices for the heating and power-generation fuel soared. February futures rose to more than $7 per million British thermal unit, the highest futures price since 2022. Prices for on-the-spot deliveries at trading hubs in the hardest hit regions surged even higher, to multiples of the benchmark futures price.

Futures prices have tumbled back down to about where they began the heating season in October, but analysts say the storm was big and cold enough to erase fears of a gas glut and has prompted them to lift price forecasts well beyond winter.

"The storage implications of the recent storm will have lingering effects," RBC analysts wrote in a note to clients Thursday. "Absent this winter storm, we think prices and the balance would have proven much looser ahead of 2027."

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 05, 2026 12:39 ET (17:39 GMT)

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