Major US LNG outage drives prices up
A major US LNG outage combined with unplanned maintenance drove gas prices up on Friday.
Gas prices surged in late afternoon trade after a relatively stable session following news of a month-long outage at the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas.
Although key contracts were initially propelled circa 0.17p/kWh higher the rally was short-lived with prices promptly falling back towards their previous settlement.
The end result was an increase of circa 0.034p/kWh across near-curve contracts when compared to their previous close.
UK and Norwegian capacity restrictions didn’t help the situation; data from Gassco shows that 25mcm was taken offline across Friday’s gas-day by a compressor failure at Norway’s Oseberg field alongside UK capacity restrictions totaling 11.5mcm (data from National Gas).
In other news, the US Government announced on Friday that new LNG projects will need to be indefinitely suspended while climate impact assessments are conducted as part of a wider green push.
The news has likely shaken global energy markets, with the US being crowned as the biggest LNG exporter for the first time last year after overtaking rivals Qatar and Australia.
NBP prices continue to edge higher this morning, with the Summer 24 front-season contract currently being offered circa 0.1p/kWh above it’s previous settlement, at time of writing.
If we check the latest half hourly period at the time of writing (11:00 – 11:30), electricity demand is currently 37.34 GW’s in the UK.
Wind generation is currently only contributing just over 11% of the UK’s total electricity demand.
Specifically, 11.78% (4.68 GW’s) of the UK’s total electricity is being generated from wind turbines currently with gas contributing 18.03 GW’s (45.37%).
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