Dutch and British wholesale gas prices were little changed on Tuesday morning as warmer weather lowered demand and helped to offset weaker supply from Norway owing to maintenance at the Troll gas field.

The benchmark Dutch front-month contract at the TTF hub (TRNLTTFMc1) was down 0.31 euros at 36.84 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), or $12.25/mmBtu, by 0818 GMT, LSEG data showed.

The Dutch July contract (TRNLTTFMc2) was up 0.06 euros at 36.88 euros/MWh.

The British day-ahead contract (TRGBNBBD1) rose by 0.35 pence to 87.60p/therm.

“Demand is slowly dropping with the warmer weather,” LSEG analyst Saku Jussila said in a daily research note.

For northwest Europe total gas demand for the day ahead was expected to drop by 150 gigawatt hours/day (GWh/d) Jussila said.
Lower demand, however, was offset by curbs in supply from Norway.

Equinor EQNR extended a partial outage at Norway’s Troll natural gas field until May 31 after a compressor failure, the company said on Monday.

“Norwegian flows have been rather volatile ahead of a period of prolonged planned maintenance this summer, which will reduce flows until early July by up to 100 mcm (million cubic metres),” consultancy Auxilione said in a daily research note.

Prices also remain supported by Europe’s need to replenish is gas stores, which are currently 46.3% full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe showed.

“Last week the build was lower than normal for this time of year – 1.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) vs. a five-year average of 2.5 bcm,” Jefferies analysts said.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract (CFI2Zc1) was down 0.58 euros at 72.40 euros a metric ton.
Source: Reuters