The May natural gas contract just ticked higher into its options expiry today, trading lower much of the day before spiking into the settle. 

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It helped prop up the rest of the strip, though we still saw small losses for much of the summer and fall strips with more supportive winter contracts. 

Overall, though, prices again traded within a very tight range again that sat below past norms for May contract options expiry. 

Prices appear to be taking a pause, stalling at the top of their recent range ahead of tomorrow's EIA print, which will either confirm or reject last week's very bullish print. Last week the EIA announced a net implied flow of -36 bcf thanks to the cold April we wrote about yesterday, coming in 74 bcf below the 5-year average and more impressive than most analyst expectations. 

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The question for traders has been whether this was a one-off event due to extremely impressive April cold that week, or whether the market is actually tighter than expected even on a weather-adjusted basis. Tomorrow's number will provide some clarity; it was still very cold for the week, but not as much so, and the number can be adjusted to see if it looser weather-adjusted week-over-week. In our EIA Rapid Release for clients last week we showed how the print (in red) was far tighter than the previous print (blue) and one before that (yellow). After tomorrow's print we will send out a similar rapid release, weather-adjusting the print and putting it in historical context while discussing how it shifts our views on current balance and expected price action. 

A combination of that tightness, the storage deficit, and short-term cold has the May/June contract spread set to go out at the second narrowest levels of the past 7 years.