Build a Natural Gas Supply and Demand Balance (Free EIA Data)

Ask anyone who trades gas how to understand the market and you'll hear the same four words: build your own balance. One trader answering a confused question about Henry Hub on r/Commodities put it in one line: "Build your own gas balance and derive the implied risk premium."

Then you go looking for how, and find either a $2,000-a-month terminal or a regression someone fit to storage and weather. Neither is a balance. And if you're interviewing for a gas desk, you may be "presented with data and expected to manipulate on the spot" — the moment a balance you've actually built pays off.

By the end of this guide, you'll have a working US natural gas supply and demand balance built only from free EIA data, a weekly storage tracker against the 5-year average, and a sheet that checks your own weekly estimates against Thursday's storage number. The workbook is free with an Arc Research account (see the end); every step below also works in a blank spreadsheet.

What a natural gas supply and demand balance actually is

A gas balance is one equation, applied every month (or week, or day):

Supply − Demand = Change in storage

• Supply: dry gas production, plus small amounts of supplemental fuels, plus imports (mostly pipeline gas from Canada).
• Demand: residential and commercial heating, industrial use, power burn (gas burned to make electricity), fuel used by producers and pipelines, LNG exports, and pipeline exports to Mexico and Canada.
• Storage: the plug. When supply beats demand, gas goes into storage (an injection). When demand wins, it comes out (a withdrawal).

Everything a gas desk argues about — weather, LNG, production growth — is an argument about one line of this equation, and what it does to storage versus normal.

What's free, and what isn't

Be clear-eyed about this before you start, because it's where most "free data stack" advice gets vague:

• Free and monthly: EIA publishes every line of the US balance each month — about two months after the fact.
• Free and weekly: the EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report, every Thursday at 10:30 ET. Storage is the only weekly number in the balance you get for free, and it's the one the market trades.
• Not free: daily or weekly estimates of production, power burn, and LNG feedgas. Desks get those from paid pipeline-flow data. You can approximate pieces of it yourself — pipeline electronic bulletin boards are public, as the Zero-Budget Data Stack explains — but it's manual.

So the free balance has three parts: a monthly balance to learn the structure and the seasons, weekly storage versus the 5-year average to see where the market stands now, and your own weekly estimate checked against Thursday's number to practice.

Step 1: Download four EIA files

All four are free Excel downloads from EIA's data pages:

1. Natural gas supply and disposition, monthly — dry production, supplemental fuels, net exports, net withdrawals from storage, the balancing item, total consumption (Bcf).
2. Consumption by end use, monthly — residential, commercial, industrial, electric power, lease and plant fuel, pipeline and distribution use, vehicle fuel (MMcf).
3. Exports, monthly — total exports, LNG exports, pipeline exports to Mexico and Canada (MMcf).
4. Weekly Lower 48 working gas in storage (Bcf).

Paste the last few years of each into a data tab. Keep EIA's units in the raw data; you'll convert in the next step.

Step 2: Convert everything to Bcf per day

Monthly totals hide the story: February has 28 days and March has 31, so a "bigger" March can just be a longer month. Desks talk in Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day), so convert every line:

• Bcf lines: divide by the days in the month.
• MMcf lines: divide by 1,000 to get Bcf, then by the days in the month.

In a spreadsheet, =DAY(EOMONTH(A4,0)) gives the days in the month of the date in A4.

Step 3: Build the supply side

• Dry production — the big one.
• Supplemental gaseous fuels — tiny; include it so the math closes.
• Imports — EIA gives net exports, so imports = total exports − net exports.

Total supply = dry production + supplemental + imports.

Step 4: Build the demand side

Seven consumption lines plus three export lines:

• Residential and commercial — heating; huge in winter, small in summer.
• Industrial — steady through the year.
• Electric power (power burn) — peaks in summer air-conditioning season.
• Lease and plant fuel and pipeline and distribution use — gas the system burns to produce and move gas.
• Vehicle fuel — small.
• LNG exports, pipeline exports to Mexico, and pipeline exports to Canada.

Total demand = the sum of all ten. A good check: your seven consumption lines should add up to EIA's total consumption.

Step 5: Compare implied storage to actual storage

Implied storage change = total supply − total demand. Positive means gas went into storage.

Then compare it with what storage actually did. EIA reports "net withdrawals from storage," so flip the sign: actual change = −net withdrawals ÷ days.

The difference between the two is EIA's balancing item — the part of the market the data can't account for (measurement differences, timing, and estimates). If your gap matches EIA's balancing item, every line is wired correctly. In the Arc workbook it matches to within 0.05 Bcf/d in every month.

Reading it like a desk: August 2026

Here's what the latest month (August 2026, published two months later) shows, in Bcf/d:

Read it out loud the way you would in an interview: in peak summer, power burn is the largest single demand line, over 40% of all demand; industrial and LNG exports come next; storage still rose by about 4 Bcf/d (the lines imply 5.9, and EIA's balancing item covers the difference), so supply comfortably beat demand. That's a balance doing its job.

Step 6: Track weekly storage against the 5-year average

Monthly data tells you the structure. Weekly storage tells you where the market is now. For each week, add:

• Net change = this week's working gas − last week's.
• Year ago = the same week last year.
• 5-year average = the average of the same week in each of the prior five years. (EIA's official 5-year average in the Thursday report is calculated slightly differently and can differ by a few Bcf.)
• Surplus or deficit = working gas − 5-year average, in Bcf and percent.

For the week ending October 23, 2026: 3,724 Bcf in storage, an 80 Bcf injection, 148 Bcf below a year earlier, and roughly in line with the 5-year average. That last comparison is the one the market cares about: is the system entering winter with more or less gas than normal?

Step 7: Check your weekly estimate against Thursday's number

This is where the balance becomes a skill. Each week, before the report:

1. Estimate the week's Bcf/d for each line: supply, res/comm, industrial, power burn, fuel, LNG feedgas, and pipeline exports. Free inputs: the EIA Natural Gas Weekly Update, weather (heating and cooling degree days — see How to Trade Natural Gas With Weather Models), and last year's same week.
2. Implied weekly change = (supply − demand) × 7.
3. On Thursday at 10:30 ET, write down EIA's reported change and your error.

You won't be accurate at first, and that's the point. Every miss tells you which line you misjudged — usually power burn in summer and res/comm in winter. Do it for a month and you'll understand why the market moves on the number.

What to do this week

1. Get the workbook (below) or build the four tabs yourself from the EIA links above.
2. After Thursday's storage report, add the new week to the storage tab and compare it with the 5-year average.
3. Fill in one weekly estimate before next Thursday, then score yourself.

If you're preparing for a gas desk interview, run this week's numbers through the five-step chain from 25 Natural Gas Trading Interview Questions — question 12 is exactly this exercise.

Get the workbook

Create a free Arc Research account and download the US Natural Gas Balance starter workbook used in this guide:

• Monthly balance in Bcf/d (48 months of EIA data, every supply and demand line)
• Weekly storage vs year-ago and 5-year average, with a chart
• A weekly estimate sheet to score yourself against Thursday's storage number

Create your free Arc Research account

Sources: EIA natural gas supply and disposition · EIA consumption by end use · EIA exports · EIA weekly working gas · EIA Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report. Monthly data through August 2026 and weekly data through the week ending October 23, 2026, as downloaded November 1, 2026; EIA revises monthly data.