US natural gas inventories rise 77 Bcf, below analyst estimates

The miss against expectations is modest, but the deceleration in the weekly build rate matters more than the headline gap: storage growth slowed from the prior week even as inventories climbed to 3.8 Tcf. For a market that leans heavily on weekly storage prints to gauge balance, a smaller-than-expected build can read as slightly tighter conditions than consensus assumed. The open question is whether this slowdown is a one-week wobble or the start of a trend, since a single print rarely settles the demand-supply picture.