Austria’s central gas hub has registered increased trading volumes on its platform this year, overcoming fallout from the halt to Russian gas flows through Ukraine, Chief Executive Gottfried Steiner said.
The virtual Central European Gas Hub (CEGH), built around the Baumgarten distribution and storage point for Russian gas, has even boosted its intraregional role since a halt to Russian supplies and has been handling more gas via Germany and Italy.
“It is a great surprise that the elimination of Russian gas transit via Slovakia has led to greater liquidity at the Austrian hub,” Steiner told Reuters.
“We are a resilient trading and transhipment hub. The past … months have demonstrated this.”
Austria re-exports to Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary, with the latter two also serving as transit points for gas to Ukraine, while remaining purchasers of Russian gas via southeast Europe.
Vienna-based CEGH was set up in 2005 as a marketplace for Russian gas arrivals including those from the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea, helped by huge nearby Austrian caverns as interim storage.
Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022, ended transit for Russian gas at the start of this year.
The 366-member CEGH traded 67.1 terawatt hours of spot gas and 76.8 TWh of gas futures in the year to May 18, up 0.3% and 12% respectively from a year earlier.
“We can be optimistic that this liquidity improvement will continue,” Steiner said.
Importers have largely replaced Russian gas with Norwegian pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) arriving in European ports.
INVENTORY REFILLS
Steiner said the gas market was beginning to see growing inventories, which are desirable for supply security.
“Price margins for feed-in in summer for winter 2025/26 have turned positive since April,” he said, echoing remarks by utility Uniper’s UN0 CEO last week.
Steiner cited a 24% drop in spot gas prices since March as policymakers have sought to discourage short-term hgoarding.
The summer-winter spread, a guide to profit opportunities, has reached up to 1 euro per megawatt hour since April, having been negative throughout the previous six months.
Source: Reuters