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First Look - Crude steady as market awaits OPEC+'s decision; natural gas headed for second consecutive weekly loss

Oil prices steady with OPEC+’s decision still in focus
- The WTI prompt-month contract fell $0.01 to $67.44/Bbl Thursday morning (7:45 AM CT)
- Oil pared an earlier decline after June payroll data came in stronger than expected, meanwhile the market awaits OPEC+’s decision
- A wildfire emerged in the Fort McMurray area near a major oil sands production site, possibly posing a threat to Canadian oil production
US lifts ethane export restrictions (Reuters)
- According to filings from Enterprise and Energy Transfer, the Bureau of Industry and Security have rescinded restrictions on ethane exports
- Ethane can now be offloaded directly in China without separate US authorization
US shale drilling contracts slightly in 2Q (Dallas Fed)
- US shale executives expect to drill fewer wells this year than planned due to lower oil prices and uncertainty around President Trump’s tariffs
- A majority of executives surveyed expect Trump’s tariffs on imported steel to weigh on customer demand
- Dive into a summary of the full report here

Natural gas heads for a second weekly loss, with the August contract near multi-month lows
- The August Henry Hub contract is slightly higher today, but heading for a weekly loss, although prices are up about 24c from this week’s lows
- Weather forecasts shifted warmer for the Midwest region, leading to a gain in expected demand over the next two weeks
- LNG feedgas demand remains strong at 15.8 Bcf/d, despite an outage at Freeport LNG which sent flows into the facility lower by about 800 MMcf/d
EIA expected to report the first smaller than average storage build since April
- Analysts polled in Platts weekly gas survey showed an expectation of a 38-59 Bcf injection, while the median estimate on Bloomberg is 49 Bcf
- This would be the first storage injection since April to be below the five-year average injection rate, driven by last week’s heat wave which impacted the Midwest and Northeast
- Inventories have built rapidly since the start of injection season, with inventories flipping from a deficit of more than 200 Bcf to a surplus of 179 Bcf

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