British and Dutch gas prices rose on Wednesday morning on cooler weather forecast and concerns over the impact of U.S. sanctions on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, but strong flows of LNG and high storage inventories limited the upside.

The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub was up 2.25 euro at 36.60 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 1023 GMT, LSEG data showed.

The February contract rose by 3.10 euro to 37.03 euros per megawatt hour (MWh).

In Britain, the front month contract rose by 7.00 pence to 93.00 p/therm while the day-ahead contract TRGBNBPD1 rose by 3.00 p to 82.00 p/therm.

“The market is seeing a bit of an uptick due to the sanctions,” a European gas trader said.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday that U.S. sanctions, announced last month, targeting Russia’s massive Arctic LNG 2 project are unacceptable and undermine global energy security.

“Colder weather today is sending power prices higher as we see some uptick in consumption due to that,” the gas trader said, adding that supply issues are not so serious and EU storage is still plentiful.

European gas inventories are currently 87.1% full latest data from Gas Infrastructure Europe showed.

“We forecast end-December storage fill at 93.9 billion cubic metres (bcm), up by 4.6 bcm y/y, meaning Europe is well placed to hit end of October 2024 storage-fill targets,” consultancy Energy Aspects said in a recent report.

In Britain, peak wind power generation was forecast at 18.4 gigawatts (GW) on Wednesday, out of the total metered capacity of about 23 GW, Elexon data showed.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract CFI2Zc1 gained 1.08 euros to 79.98 euros a metric ton.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Marwa Rashad; Editing by Susanna Twidale)