Gas Summary at European Close: TTF Retreats

Front month TTF has continued its pull back during the day as mild, windy weather is weighing on gas demand while the market moves to net injections.

• TTF MAY 24 down 3.7% at 26.33€/MWh
• TTF SUM 24 up 2% at 27.98€/MWh
• Temperatures in NW Europe are forecast to rise further above normal in the coming days before drifting back from a peak around Apr. 6.
• Norwegian pipeline supplies to Europe are nominated at 344.4mcm/d today amid a planned outage at Karsto this week.
• Europe has ended the winter season with record high natural gas storage inventory levels which are set to weigh on injection demand and market fundamentals over the summer according to IEA analyst Greg Molnar.
• European gas storage was at 58.72% full on Mar. 31 according to GIE with a switch to net injections on March 30. The seasonal five-year average is 41.5% full.
• The total estimated quantity of LNG on tankers that have not unloaded for at least 20 days rose by 8.5% last week to 3.71mn tons as of 31 March.
• Global weekly LNG imports edged up by 4% to 7.9mn tons during 25-31 March, despite shipments to NW Europe and Italy falling to the lowest since October according to BNEF.
• Global LNG supply will reach 665m mtpa by 2030 with capacity additions in North America and the Middle East creating a buyer’s market, according to Barclays, cited by Bloomberg.
• Russia’s plan to rapidly expand its LNG exports are stalling due to US sanctions delaying shipments from the new Arctic LNG 2 project, according to Bloomberg.