Mid-Day Gas Summary: Markets Await Strike Update

TTF front month is trading higher as markets await updates on the planned industrial action in Australia from Friday, while Norwegian gas flows to Europe fell to the lowest on record today amid outage extensions to the large Troll field and the Kollsnes processing plant.

• TTF OCT 23 up 4.8% at 32.57€/MWh
• TTF spreads are this week extending gains to new highs as upside for coming seasons is supported by supply risks and uncertainty over winter weather. The Q1 2024 - Oct23 spread rallied to a new high yesterday at 19.5€/MWh also driven by the easing near term prices on optimism of reduced LNG supply risks.
• Chevron workers are set to start industrial action at the Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG export facilities on Friday 6am AWST (Thursday 23:00 BST), following a 24-hour delay.
• Norwegian pipeline supplies to Europe are back down to 123.2mcm/d, the lowest on record since at least 2015. The outage at the 153mcm/d Kollsnes facility has been extended by one day until 9 Sept. Works at the Troll field, affecting 45mcm/d, have been extended by one day until 13 Sept.
• European natural gas storage was at 93.34% full on a 4 Sep according to GIE data compared to the five year average for this time of year of 81.9%.
• Industrial gas demand in August rose by 5.57% on the month to 1.043TWh/d. Gas demand from households and small businesses declined by 16.4% month on month to 194GWh/d.
• Swiss hydropower reserves last week rose by 2.6 percentage points to 84.5% of capacity as of 4 September and moved to a surplus to the five-year average for the first time in seven weeks.
• The latest EIA weekly gas inventories for the week ending 1 Sep will be released this afternoon at 15:30BST. The expectation is for a build of +41bcf according to a Bloomberg survey compared to a build of +32bcf last week and the seasonal normal of +51bcf. The US storage surplus has seen a gradual decline in recent weeks.
• LNG sendout to Europe is edging higher this week up to 355mcm/d on 5 Sep but flows into NW Europe are still just below levels from last year.
• LNG storage at major Japanese power utilities fell to 1.79m tonnes in August, down by 0.96m tonnes on the year and 0.21m tonnes below the five-year average.
• India’s GAIL will use activity on the LNG spot market to meet spikes in power demand, Reuters said.