Tuesday, 17 March 2015 17:23
LONDON: Prompt natural gas prices in Britain eased on Tuesday with the system close to balanced as supply flows rose to meet stronger demand, triggered by cold weather.
Meteorologists expect temperatures to remain below seasonal norms over the coming week.
Gas prices for within-day delivery were down 0.6 percent at 46.70 pence per therm at 0950 GMT.
National Grid data showed the system was close to balanced with supply flows at around 273 million cubic metres (mcm) and demand forecast at around 272 mcm.
An full upstream flow outage at Britain’s Teesside gas processing plant on Tuesday was expected to last for 12 hours, operator TGPP Ltd said.
“The balanced system has led to prompt prices softening marginally from the open of the session, though ongoing outages and strong demand for gas generation are limiting losses,” Marcel Boonaert, head of trading and portfolio at Wingas UK said in a note.
Norwegian gas exports to Europe were steady on Tuesday morning compared with the previous day, data from gas system operator Gassco showed.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments continued to arrive in Britain, after European gas benchmarks briefly traded at a premium to Asia, with tanker Arctic Voyager added to the list of arrivals due at British terminals.
Prices for summer delivery were down 0.7 percent at 43.75 pence per therm.
In the Netherlands, the day-ahead gas price at the TTF hub was up 0.1 percent at 21.38 euros per megawatt-hour, while prices from April onwards were firm.
The benchmark European Union carbon price was down 1.1 percent to 6.47 euros per tonne on ICE Futures Europe.
Copyright Reuters, 2015
