(Montel) Benchmark European gas prices eased on Tuesday morning as abundant supply offset forecasts pointing to significantly colder weather from next week.
The front month on the Dutch TTF hub last traded at EUR 45.05/MWh, down EUR 0.77 on its prior settlement. Earlier it touched a low of EUR 44.91/MWh, down almost 7% from Monday’s intraday high of EUR 48.17/MWh.
The equivalent contract on the UK’s NBP hub was down 1.76p at 114.51p/th.
One analyst linked the pressure to the extent of current gas imports.
European storage facilities last stood at 99% capacity, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe data. Inventories even climbed marginally on Sunday, latest data showed. Europe’s gas storage facilities have not posted a net injection beyond 15 November in any prior year of the past decade.
“I would not be surprised to see withdrawals on Wednesday, but injections again on Thursday,” said Klaas Dozeman, analyst at trading firm Brainchild Commodity Intelligence.
Temperatures in Europe’s biggest gas consumer, Germany, are set to dip on Wednesday and rebound on Thursday. By the weekend, however, they will drop into a significantly cooler trend.
German temperatures should average almost 3C below normal next week, a downward correction of almost 1C from Monday’s outlook, according to Montel’s Energy Quantified.
Elevated flows
This comes amid some of the highest Norwegian pipeline flows to Europe since the start of 2022.
Flows were nominated at 353mcm/day on Tuesday, up marginally day on day, according to Gassco data. Gassco extended a 6mcm/day outage this morning at its Kollsnes facility by one day until Thursday.
Europe’s elevated pace of LNG imports also look set to continue with around 3.6bcm forecast to arrive at EU, UK and Turkish destinations this week, according to Kpler ship-tracking data.
Total German weekly gas demand was last down around 16% below its 2018-2021 average, according to network regulator data.
