Dutch wholesale gas prices were trading in a narrow range on Wednesday morning after rising to their highest in a week the previous day.

The benchmark Dutch front-month contract (TRNLTTFMc1) inched down by 0.40 euro to 34.50 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) at 0719 GMT, while the July contract edged up by 0.18 euro to 34.75 euros/MWh, according to LSEG data.

Average temperatures in north-west Europe are expected to increase slightly towards the weekend.

Local distribution zone demand, mainly used for heating, is forecast to be 10% lower on the day-ahead compared to the previous forecast yesterday, according to LSEG data.

“With the rest of fundamental picture remaining the same, it is a bearish factor, although the technical signals are still quite bullish. Therefore, we expect TTF DA to trade sideways/bullishly,” said Dzmitry Dauhalevich, LSEG gas analyst.

Prices rose to their highest in a week yesterday due to an unplanned outage in Norway and drafts of the European Commission’s roadmap for phasing out Russian energy by 2027.

In the United States, Freeport LNG has suffered an outage at its 2.1 billion cubic feet per day Texas liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas, two sources said.

The company declined to comment when asked about the outage. It was not immediately clear how long the plant would be offline or what had caused the outage.

“This could provide some further support to European gas prices in the immediate term, depending on the duration of the outage,” said analysts at ING.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract (CFI2Zc1) was up 0.04 euro at 69.31 euros per metric ton.
Source: Reuters