Natural-gas futures are inching up Thursday after a weekly stockpile report showed a smaller surplus than expected. Producers added 75 billion cubic feet of gas to storage for the week ended Aug. 22, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The addition was 2 bcf smaller than the 77 bcf consensus average expectations of by analysts and brokers in The Wall Street Journal survey. Natural gas for October delivery immediately added 1.8% after the data release, on top of gains from early-morning trading. The market pulled back nearly all of that spike, but is still rising on the day, recently trading up 6 cents, or 1.5%, to $4.063 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Traders use the EIA update to gauge how quickly stockpiles are recovering from high demand that drained them to 11-year lows this past winter. Last week’s […]