Prices rise amid Middle East concerns, Norwegian outage

Dutch and British gas prices rose on Tuesday morning amid concerns about tensions in the Middle East, Freeport LNG terminal gas still down and an unplanned outage in Norway.

The benchmark front-month contract TRNLTTFMc1 at the Dutch TTF hub rose by 0.97 euro to 32.37 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 0825 GMT, while the day-ahead contract TRNLTTFD1 was 1.15 euros higher at 32.25 euros/MWh, LSEG data showed.

In the British market, the day-ahead price TRGBNBPD1 rose by 3.50 pence to 81.00 pence per therm.

“Uncertainty in the Middle East will be a concern for the European gas market, particularly with the region more reliant on LNG supplies since the Russia-Ukraine war,” said analysts at ING.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday summoned his war cabinet for the second time in less than 24 hours to weigh a response to Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack, a government source said.

Military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said Israel would respond. He provided no details.

Also providing price support is an unplanned outage at Norway’s Nyhamna processing plant, which has led to Norwegian daily gas flows to Europe falling by around 15% since Friday to below 300 million cubic metres/day, ING analysts added.

The outage has been extended by until tomorrow.

In north-west Europe, temperatures are forecast to drop to around 3.5 degrees Celsius below the seasonal average by Thursday this week and the colder weather is expected to last until the end of this month, LSEG data showed.

Winds are forecast to drop from today, which could raise demand for gas from power plants. They are then expected to pick up over the weekend.

Freeport LNG’s liquefaction plant in the United States also remains mostly offline for a fifth straight day on Monday, with gas utilization rates at 125 million cubic feet per day (mmcf/d), or 5% of its fully operational use, data from LSEG showed.

On the bearish side, European storage levels are around 61% full.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract CFI2Zc1 was up 2.12 euros at 72.67 euros per metric ton.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Nina Chestney)