British and Dutch wholesale gas continued to move upward on Wednesday morning as an extended outage at the Freeport liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in the U.S. and the cut of supplies via the Russian Nord Stream 1 pipeline raised supply concerns.
The Dutch front-month contract TRNLTTFMc1 (TRPC Natural Gas TTF Monthly Continuation 1) was up as much as 4.10 euros at 101 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 0855 GMT, its highest level since mid-May.
Yesterday, Russian gas giant Gazprom announced a 40% reduction in natural gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline, while putting the blame on German engineering giant Siemens for failing to restore key turbines on time.
The Dutch front-month contract TRNLTTFMc1 rose to 96.90 euros on Tuesday, up 15% from 84.20 euros on Monday.
Physical flows to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline dipped below 40,000,000 kilowatt hours per hour (kWh/h) on Tuesday, but the flows were seen to be back at 44,888,472 kWh/h on Wednesday morning.
Gas storage sites in the European Union were 52.63% full, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe showed, but Europe faces a perilous winter even with full storage, according to Commerzbank.
The outage extension at Freeport LNG also doubled supply concerns after the company announced that the explosion last week at the Texas plant would keep it fully offline until September with only partial operation through year-end.
Freeport LNG is one of the largest U.S. export plants producing liquefied natural gas (LNG).
