Dutch and British wholesale gas prices traded sideways in a narrow range on Wednesday morning and remained close to their 15-month high seen earlier this week, amid cold temperature forecast and concerns over storage build.
The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub was nearly flat at 52.30 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), or $15.93/mmBtu, by 0949 GMT, according to LSEG data.
The contract hit an intra-day high of 54.61 euros/MWh on Monday, its highest level since October 2023 and is over 30% up since mid-December.
The Dutch day ahead contract (TRNLTTFD1) was up 0.37 euro at 52.65 euros/MWh.
In Britain, the front-month contract (TRGBNBPMc1) rose 1.29 pence at 128.75 p/therm.
In Northwest Europe temperatures will start a declining trend, falling on the day ahead by 0.8 °Celsius. Currently, a minimum is predicted to be reached in a week’s time at 1 °C below normal, LSEG data showed.
“Below-normal temperatures in most European countries continue to maintain gas demand (for heating) at high levels,” EnergyScan analysts said in a daily note.
Consultancy Auxilione said that market fundamentals remain unchanged and there is still plenty of concern for the markets in the short term for that trend to continue, while colder temperatures arriving in the coming days will add further pressure to storage withdrawals.
“Whilst we can see European countries review their requirements as to gas storage refill for next winter, the fact remains the lower the stocks come the end of March the more that will be needed to inject during the summer and the negative spread between the summer and winter contracts is still very wide,” Auxilione analysts said.
Europe’s gas stores are currently 51.97% full, data from gas Infrastructure Europe showed.
So far, the market has shrugged off the news on China’s retaliatory tariffs in response to new U.S. restrictions against the Chinese, imposing a 15% levy on U.S. LNG.
The near-term impact is viewed as limited, with most US LNG volumes already flowing to Europe due to a steep premium.
In the European carbon market (CFI2Zc1), the benchmark contract was down 1.02 euros at 79.86 euros a metric ton.
Source: Reuters