Wholesale prices down thanks to good supply outlook

Gas prices continued to go down at the NBP throughout Thursday, with contracts across the near-curve moving circa 1.5p/therm (0.05p/kWh) lower when compared to their previous close.

Largely unchanged fundamentals helped to reinforce confidence in the British supply and demand dynamic, especially regarding the short term outlook.

LNG continues to serve as a prime source of confidence. According to the latest shipping signals, up to 7 vessels could arrive at British terminals over the next 7 days, 6 of which are laden with cargoes from the United States.

A recent phase of weak gas demand across East Asian markets has resulted in the diversion of dozens of cargoes toward the European market, helping nations in the region to fend off unseasonably low temperatures and below average wind generation that has persisted across a large part of January.

Norwegian supplies into Great Britain remained largely unchanged, with pipeline infrastructure running at near-maximum capacity. An unplanned outage at the Njord field has been removing export availability at a rate of 5.3mcm/d since Wednesday 15th due to process problems, though it is not considered a significantly large outage, and current data suggests it should conclude by Monday 20th (data from Gassco UMM).

This morning, it appears that the bears have been able to retain control of the NBP, with the Summer 25 front-season contract currently being offered at a premium of circa 1p/therm (0.034p/kWh) when compared to its previous settlement, at time of writing.

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Price commentary courtesy of Crown Gas and Power