Dutch and British wholesale gas prices traded in a narrow range on Monday morning as temperatures across the continent turned milder following a recent cold snap and as the market monitored the peace talks to end the war in Ukraine.

The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub (TRNLTTFMc1) inched down by 0.06 euro to 46.00 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), or $14.12/mmBtu, by 0941 GMT, LSEG data showed.

The April TTF contract (TRNLTTFMc2) edged up by 0.23 euro to 46.83 euros/MWh.

The British day-ahead contract (TRGBNBPD1) was up 0.25 pence at 110.00 pence per therm.

“The market will probably wait to see whether the current improvement in spot fundamentals will lead to a narrowing of the storage gap. And it will keep a close eye on the level of Asia LNG imports as the fall in gas prices towards Brent prices is likely to increase Asian buyers’ willingness to pay,” Engie EnergyScan analysts said in a morning note.

Over the past two weeks, TTF prices have corrected by more than 20%, falling back to around 46 euros/MWh, mainly driven by a U.S. push for Russia-Ukraine peace settlement, calls from EU countries to relax gas storage refill mandates, as well as forecasts of warmer and windier weather, analysts at Timera Energy said.

EU gas storage sites have depleted faster this winter because of colder and less windy weather and are now about 40.76% full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe showed.

“The prospect of changes to storage mandates and a peace deal have helped take the steam out of what has been a sustained rally in TTF prices across the last 12 months. But so far this is a price correction, not a major market inflection point,” Timera Energy analysts said.

“However neither a peace deal nor storage mandate changes are likely to add significant incremental supply volumes into the European gas market,” they added.

In the European carbon market (CFI2Zc1), the benchmark contract was down 1.07 euro at 72.83 euros a metric ton.
Source: Reuters