Investing.com - U.S. natural gas prices traded largely unchanged Friday, but remained on course for a losing week as the country witnessed its second straight week of inventory injection.

At 09:10 ET (13:10 GMT), natural gas prices fell 0.1% to $3.922 per million British thermal units, or MMBtu, but were set to lose around 2.5% over the course of the last week.

“The weekly inventory report from the Energy Information Administration shows that U.S. natural gas storage increased by 37bcf [billion cubic feet] over the last week, above the expected 32bcf increase. However, this was contrary to the five-year average decline of 31 bcf,” said analysts at ING, in a note.

“Meanwhile, total gas stockpiles totalled 1.74tcf [trillion cubic feet] as of 21 March, down 24.2% year-on-year and 6.5% below the five-year average."

Additionally, a warmer-than-average March is reinforcing the soft demand environment and weighing on fundamentals.

In Europe, gas storage was 34% full at 35bcm [billion cubic meters] as of 25 March, 25% lower than at the same time in 2024 and 8% below the 5-year average.

The rate of storage withdrawal notably slowed week-on-week to -0.6bcm due to milder weather, compared to the previous week’s -1.9bcm, but still slightly above -0.5bcm a year ago and the 5-year average of -0.4bcm, UBS noted.

Analysts at the Swiss bank also noted that the market is keeping an eye on developments around a Russia-Ukraine deal.

Additionally, a ban on Russian LNG transshipment at any ports of EU countries introduced in June 2024 has taken effect from 26 March, although there are still exceptions for gas transported directly to the EU to meet their energy demand.

“This will affect ~25% of transhipment from Yamal LNG to Asia (notably China),” UBS added.