Capacity restrictions pressure wholesale prices
Climbing UK and Norwegian capacity restrictions increased pressure on gas prices on Wednesday.
Small, incremental gains of no more than 0.034p/kWh were posted across the curve, adding to the gains accumulated across the previous 4 sessions.
Unplanned maintenance across the UK and Norway likely offered support to near-curve prices. According to data from offshore operator Gassco, 16mcm was taken offline by an outage at Norway’s Kollsnes gas processing plant, which coincided with a 7% reduction in Norway-UK Langeled flows across the gas-day.
The tighter supply picture was likely exacerbated by the additional 10.8mcm that taken offline at the UK’s Barrow and Dimlington facilities due to technical issues (data from National Gas).
In positive news the latest shipping signals indicate that as many as 6 laden vessels could arrive at British terminals over the next 7 days.
Furthermore, National Grid has signed a deal with Algerian gas producer Sonatrach for capacity at the Isle of Grain terminal. The deal offers 3 million tonnes/year at the Isle of Grain terminal for 10 years, starting in January 2029.
This morning, gas prices are relatively unchanged, with most contracts being offered very much in line with their previous settlement at time of writing.
If we check the latest half hourly period at the time of writing (14:00 – 14:30), electricity demand is currently 35.22 GW’s in the UK.
Wind turbines are contributing over 32% of the UK’s total electricity demand.
Specifically, 32.62% (12.14 GW’s) of the UK’s total electricity is being generated from wind turbines currently with gas contributing 10.36 GW’s (27.82%).
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