Dutch and British wholesale prices were a touch firmer but largely stable on Wednesday morning as some forecasts indicated colder weather in November and Norwegian outages and geopolitical risk continue to spur supply concerns.

The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub was up 0.30 euros at 41.35 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 0849 GMT, LSEG data showed.

In the British market, the day-ahead contract TRGBNBPD1 was up 0.40 pence at 101.75 pence per therm, while the front-month gained 0.50 pence to 102.15 p/therm.

“Temperature forecasts for November were lowered below seasonal normal in the latest simulations, which may start to add pressure to the supply/demand mix,” Auxilione analysts said in a morning note.

Prices rose on Tuesday, partly driven by an emergency stop of Equinor’s Sleipner B platform, though Equinor said it could replace the volumes from other fields.

The outage is currently expected to last until Monday, according to latest transparency data published via Norwegian gas infrastructure operator Gassco.

The market remains alert to risks of outages at European gas infrastructure or anything that could impact global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, LSEG analyst Yuriy Onyshkiv said in a monthly report.

“Geopolitics will no doubt continue to inject volatility, given the simmering and fluid Middle East situation, and we await the next news-driven spike,” he added.

European gas storage will switch to full withdrawals in November, with LSEG expecting storage levels to drop to 85%, 11 percentage points below last year but still healthy, Onyshkiv said.

Storage sites are currently 95.3% full, European gas infrastructure data shows.

In the European carbon market CFI2Zc1, the benchmark contract was up 1.62 euros at 63.87 euros a metric ton.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo, Editing by David Goodman)