Gas prices soften amid strong wind conditions
Gas prices softened on Friday, as surging wind output paired up with a bearish wider energy complex to undermine bullish momentum built up across the week.
The biggest losses were observed further out, with the Summer 26 contract tumbling a considerable 0.1p/kWh when compared to its previous close.
Data collated from National Grid shows that wind output reached 10.3GW across the gas-day, accounting for around 40% of Britain’s overall power mix. This subsequently prompted a sharp drop in gas-fired power demand which dived 52% to total just 2.8GW over the same period.
Plummeting oil and carbon prices may have helped later-dated contracts, data from ICE shows that the Brent Crude and Carbon EUA benchmarks saw day-on-day losses of 1% and 1.8% respectively with the former falling to its lowest level since March of this year.
The bulls have seemingly reclaimed control of the NBP this morning, with a massive unplanned outage at Norway’s Nyhamna processing facility removing almost 80mcm/d of export capacity and propelling the new July 24 front month contract a massive 0.27p/kWh above its previous settlement at time of writing.
If you want to see more information on the wholesale market trends subscribe to our weekly report here.