Dutch and British wholesale prices fluctuated on Monday morning amid colder weather forecasts and a drop in Norwegian supply, but as Russian gas flows via Ukraine remained stable and more liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes are headed to Europe.
The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub traded up by 0.18 euro at 45.90 euros per megawatt hour by 1007 GMT, having fluctuated between losses and gains this morning, LSEG data showed.
On Friday, it hit 47.15 euros/MWh intraday, its highest since Nov. 24 last year, after Austria’s OMV announced Russia’s Gazprom would suspend its gas deliveries to the company.
The British front-month contract was up 1.56 pence at 117.80 pence per therm, while the day-ahead contract gained 1.15 pence to 116.65 p/therm.
“The latest EC46 forecast has adjusted towards colder temperatures for the first half of December, which would be the major bullish factor today,” LSEG analyst Saku Jussila wrote in a morning report.
Norwegian flows are down on Monday morning following outages at the Aasgard and Oseberg fields.
However, nominations of Russian gas to Europe remained unchanged over the weekend and gas is physically flowing as it was before, with other buyers seemingly stepping in to snap up unsold volume.
“What we’ve seen over the weekend is that commercial interests have counterbalanced geopolitical risk or the OMV arbitration dispute,” a trader said, adding it was pretty unpredictable how this will pan out in the coming days.
There were still upside risks from a colder period, faster depletion in EU gas inventories and a generally weaker wind profile, the trader added.
“Price wise, I can’t see a significant step down from where we are with the supply uncertainty and weather fundamentals,” he said.
Meanwhile, there was an influx of new LNG cargoes heading towards Europe and Britain, just as the cold is taking hold, analysts at Auxilione said in a morning note.
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract gained 0.34 euro to 68.35 euros a metric ton.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo; Editing by Shreya Biswas)