Mid-Day Gas Summary: TTF Rises To 15 June High

TTF is extending yesterday’s gains and rose to the highest level since 15 June following news regarding potential strikes impacting LNG supplies from Australia as early as September 2 and with upcoming supply reductions from Norwegian maintenance.

• TTF SEP 23 up 8.5% at 44.26€/MWh
• JKM-TTF Sep 23 down -1$/mmbtu at 0.93$/mmbtu
• European natural gas prices could hit EUR100/MWh if Australian LNG strikes take place and cause maximum disruption, Goldman Sachs said in a note Aug. 22.
• Woodside Energy on Tuesday continued talks with workers and unions ahead of the crucial meeting on Wednesday which decides whether workers at the North West Shelf offshore gas platforms will start industrial action as early as 2 September according to the firm. “We have some substantive agreements on a number of items”, Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill said.
• South Korea is likely to see less of an impact from supply cuts than Japan should strike action take place at Australian LNG facilities.
• Norwegian pipeline supplies to Europe are today at 303mcm/d due to seasonal field and processing plant maintenance and expected to fall further with more outages planned to start this week.
• Norwegian natural gas output last month stood 10.5% below the forecast at 321.4mcm/d, up from 250.7mcm/d in June.
• European gas storage is up to 91.34% full on a 20 Aug according to GIE data compared to the five year average for this time of year of 77.9%.
• Ukraine is increasing volumes of stored natural gas faster than planned with around 13bcm of already in storage, compared with Ukraine’s total gas reserves capacity of 30bcm, Energy Minister German Galushchenko says on ministry website.
• French nuclear reactor availability fell to 56% on Tuesday, down from 61% on Monday as hot weather forced to units to shut down, EdF remit data and Bloomberg calculations showed.
• LNG sendout to Europe has fallen to around 260mcm/d with a drop in flows into NW Europe and compared to an average of about 290mcm/d seen so far in August.
• Russian is planning to use the Sakhalin-2 LNG volumes for domestic supply, squeezing spot exports.
• The current heatwave in east Texas and the US Gulf is now forecast to persist through late August supporting natural gas demand for power generation according to S&P Commodity Insights.