Gas Mid-Day Summary: TTF Trades Higher

European TTF gas prices are trading higher as the timing of any disruption to Australia LNG supplies could coincide with seasonal maintenance in Norway or the start of the winter heating season as Europe competes with Asia for LNG supplies.

• TTF SEP 23 up 7.7% at 37.09€/MWh
• Australia LNG Strike Update:
  Chevron is preparing to bypass unions and put its pay offer to a direct vote of its Gorgon and Wheatstone workforce to avoid industrial action. At Chevron, around 500 workers started voting on a range of industrial action options at the Gorgon and Wheatstone onshore plants and Wheatstone platform. The ballot will finish by next week. Chevron is delaying plans to sell some LNG spot market cargoes from its 15.6mtpa Gorgon LNG facility. At Woodside, workers can already start strike action within seven days’ notice. The union was in an all-day meeting with Woodside on Tuesday. Outstanding issues remain, the union said.
• Norwegian pipeline supplies to Europe are nominated today at 326.6mcm/d and in line with levels seen last week ahead of an expected drop later this month amid further maintenance works. Field and processing plan outages are expected to gradually increase from this weekend.
• France’s EdF has warned on Monday of potential capacity cuts of up to 4.5GW at two of its power plants in southern France from 20 August onwards due to high temperatures in the Rhone river, which could boost additional gas demand for cooling.
• Total EU gas storage is up to 89.45% full on a 13 Aug according to GIE data compared to the five year average for this time of year of 75.5%.
• The volumes of LNG cargoes on the water for more than 20 days rose 0.5% on the week, according to Bloomberg.
• LNG sendout to Europe was holding steady at 283mcm/d on 13 August with imports still below levels seen last year.
• JKM Sep 23 up 9.2% at 12.49$/mmbtu
• JKM-TTF Sep 23 up 0.5$/mmbtu at 0.59$/mmbtu
• Gas output in the seven US shale basins is forecast to fall by 0.146bcf/d to 98.262bcf/d in September according to the EIA drilling productivity report. EIA has revised the August shale gas forecast up from 97.972bcf/d to 98.409bcf/d.