Mid-Day Gas Summary: TTF Trades Lower

TTF has eased back today after seeing a short spike following the outage extension to the large Troll field in Norway. Ongoing concern for global LNG supplies from strikes at facilities in Australia are balanced against low demand and healthy storage levels ahead of the winter season.

• TTF OCT 23 down -1.3% at 35.37€/MWh
• JKM-TTF Oct 23 up 0.1$/mmbtu at 0.67$/mmbtu
• Australia Strike: Chevron’s three applications requesting regulators to intervene in LNG labour dispute in Australia will be heard together on 22 September, Fair Work Commission President Justice Adam Hatcher said. Chevron must participate in further mediation with the unions before the date of the hearing, Hatcher said. Strikes are to intensify with full walkouts on 14 Sept.
• Australia’s weekly LNG exports fell by 7.53% on the week to 1.35mn tons in the week starting 4 September. Chevron’s Gorgon plant shipped out four cargoes, in line with the seasonal average, but down from five loadings for the last five consecutive weeks.
• Norwegian pipeline supplies to Europe are at 137.5mcm/d today after another extension to the key Troll outage until tomorrow. The large Troll field maintenance has been extended by one more day until 14 Sept. The field was originally scheduled to return on 7 Sept.
• European natural gas storage was at 93.81% full on a 10 Sep according to GIE data compared to the five year average for this time of year of 83.3% amid slow injection rates.
• LNG sendout to Europe has fallen back from around 330mcm/d at the start of the month to 268mcm/d on 10 Sep.
• The first train of the Arctic LNG 2 project started commissioning works, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said.
• China is returning to the LNG spot market with the aim to stock up LNG for the winter period. China’s Unipec released a tender to purchase LNG through Dec 2024.
• US LNG exports continue to be most profitable to Asia for the remainder of 2023, according to BNEF.
• Global LNG supply is forecast to increase by 6% this winter compared to the previous year with the bulk of the growth due to the return of Freeport LNG from a lengthy outage.