Mid-Day Gas Summary: TTF Struggles To Find Direction

European gas markets see another day of volatile trading with the front month ranging between €31.995-35/MWh, as low pipeline flows from Norway to Europe and potential industrial action at Australia’s LNG facilities are weighed against lower industrial demand and healthy gas stock levels.

• TTF OCT 23 up 0.9% at 33.88€/MWh
• JKM-TTF Oct 23 down 0$/mmbtu at 2.32$/mmbtu
• TTF WIN 23 up 0.7% at 47.61€/MWh
• TTF SUM 24 up 0.4% at 50.7€/MWh
• Workers at Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG facilities could extend strikes from 14 Sep with 24-hour stoppages after strikes of up to 11 hours per day from 7-13 Sep. Chevron and the unions began mediation discussions on Monday while Chevron said on Tuesday the firm has continuity plans for potential disruptions to LNG supplies in place.
• Norwegian pipeline supplies to Europe have increased slightly to 137.1mcm/d today. Latest maintenance schedules suggest curtailments to ease from Wednesday.
• European natural gas storage is up to 93.28% full on a 3 Sep according to GIE data compared to the five year average for this time of year of 81.7%.
• A normal winter could pose difficulties for some gas importers, such as Germany, as the market does not have a lot of extra supply, Chevron president of global gas, Freeman Shaheen, said.
• China’s apparent natural gas consumption was 227.72 bcm from January-July, up 8.07% on the year, according to the NDRC.
• The total estimated quantity of LNG on tankers that have not unloaded for at least 20 days rose by 7.3% over the last week to 2.78mn tons as of 3 September.
• 50 million tons of global LNG will be diverted to Europe in 2023, and that means demand in Asia is still far from recovering to 2021 levels, said Russell Hardy, CEO of Vitol Group.
• LNG sendout to Europe is holding steady this week at about 325mcm/d on 3 Sep and still just below levels seen this time last year. European LNG sendout fell to 3.4 TWh/d in August down from 3.7 TWh/d a year earlier and the lowest for the month of August since 2014, excluding 2020 according to Argusmedia.