Newswire — British and Dutch wholesale gas rose on Wednesday after Gazprom warned capacity through its pipeline to Germany would be cut further from Thursday and an extended outage at the Freeport liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant re-ignited supply concerns.
The Dutch front-month contract was up 16.7 euros at 113.60 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 1518 GMT, its highest level since mid-May. The day-ahead contract was up 17.07 euros at 107.50 euros/MWh.
Gazprom said flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would be curbed to up to 67 million cubic metres (mcm) from 1.30 am Moscow time on Thursday (2230 GMT on Wednesday) due to issues with Siemens made equipment at the Portovaya compressor station near St Petersburg.
Gazprom had already on Tuesday said flows were cut to up to 100 mcm per day, down from 167 mcm, citing the delayed return of equipment that had been sent for repair.
Supply concerns are compounded by an outage extension at Freeport LNG, one of the largest U.S. operators of liquefied natural gas export terminals, which would remove 40 cargoes.
“This threatens to undermine the very solid replenishment of stocks that has been seen of late. At a good 52%, storage facilities in the EU were almost back at their usual filling level recently,” analysts at Commerzbank said in a note.
Gas storage sites in the European Union were 52.63% full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe showed, but Europe faces a perilous winter even with full storage, analysts warned.
Physical flows to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline dipped below 40,000,000 kilowatt hours per hour (kWh/h) on Tuesday, but were seen higher at 44,888,435 kWh/h by Wednesday afternoon.
The British day-ahead contract < TRGBNBPD1> was up 20 pence to 186 p per therm, while the British July contract rose by 2.75 p to 199.25 p/therm.
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract rose by 1.36 euros to 85.51 euros a tonne. (Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo and Susanna Twidale in London; Editing by Nina Chestney and Edmund Blair)
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