Dutch and British wholesale gas prices declined on Monday morning on higher forecast temperatures this week and supply outages easing.
The benchmark front-month contract TRNLTTFMc1 at the Dutch TTF hub was 1.10 euro lower at 34.65 euros per megawatt hour (MWH), or $11.32 mmBtu, by 0813 GMT, while the November contract TRNLTTFMc2 was 0.92 euro lower at 36.43 euros/MWh, LSEG data showed.
In the British market, the day-ahead contract TRGBNBPD1 fell by 2.05 pence to 83.75 pence per therm.
Higher average temperatures in north-west Europe are expected this week and the impact of Norwegian maintenance outages should ease by Friday.
Norwegian flows to Britain are also up today as the Langeled pipeline has returned fully from a maintenance outage.
U.S. Gulf Coast energy facilities on Friday were restarting operations as companies assessed the damage from Hurricane Francine. Ports reopened and onshore terminals accepted oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers.
European gas storage is close to full capacity, with utilisation at 93% or 96 billion cubic metres (bcm) as of Sept. 10, analysts at UBS said.
“We calculate that storage would be in the low 50s by end- March 2025 based on a normal winter, i.e. around 7% below this year’s level but above the five-year average (34%),” they said.
They also said they expect to see a higher risk premium in the fourth quarter, despite weak fundamentals, raising their European gas Q4 forecasts slightly by 4% to 42.00 euros/MWh or $13.50 mmBtu.
“This premium is driven by geopolitical risk including uncertainty around the future of Ukraine transit flows and weather risk,” they added.
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract CFI2Zc1 was 1.13 euros lower at 63.86 euros per metric ton.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Nina Chestney)