Europe gas: Prices hold steady despite latest Sudzha gas station attack
Dutch and British wholesale gas prices were largely steady on Friday as the latest attacks on a Russian gas supply point were balanced by an improved supply-demand outlook as winter ends.
The Dutch front-month contract was up €0.17 at €41.17 per megawatt hour (MWh), or $12.99/MMBtu, by 1104 GMT, LSEG data showed.
The Dutch day-ahead contract was down €0.10 at €40.90/MWh.
The British day-ahead contract inched up by 0.52 pence to 98.50 p/therm, while the weekend contract was up 0.65 pence at 97.45 p/therm.
The market showed little reaction to reports that the metering station at the Russian gas metering station in Sudzha, which is at the transit point where Russia pumped gas by pipeline across Ukraine and into Europe until the end of last year, has been largely destroyed, while an attack on the site a week earlier had sent prices higher.
Given the facility was already attacked last week and that there was a growing belief in a ceasefire, this probably explains the muted reaction, a trader said.
In addition, wider market sentiment has also calmed as the winter is coming to a close and withdrawals from gas storages are bottoming out, he added.
There were also growing signs that gas demand in China was weak, reducing competition for liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes needed to re-fill gas storages this summer, another trader said.
EU gas storage inventories were last seen 33.6% full, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe.
"Storage levels are likely to fall below 30% by April, significantly below historical levels," Daniel Hynes, senior commodities strategist at ANZ said in a note.
Restocking Europe's stores of natural gas will still be a challenge given there is still little prospect of a return of Russian pipeline gas, which increases reliance on the LNG market, he added.
Meanwhile, temperature expectations for next week had been revised lower, LSEG data showed.
In addition, gas send-out from LNG terminals in Belgium and France was below expectations, LSEG analyst Ulrich Weber said in a morning report.
"Overall, this has our two-week balance flipping from net injections of 4 terawatt hours (TWh) to withdrawals of 1.7 TWh, so certainly a bullish change," he added.
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract edged up by €0.50 to €69.04/tonne.
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