The European gas market continues to be characterized by an insufficient supply. The Nord Stream is temporarily unavailable due to planned maintenance and little or no extra gas is supplied from Russia on other routes where there is still space.
On Thursday 7 July, the gas price on the TTF was 183,18 per MWh, the highest price since the beginning of March. After that, the gas market seemed to calm down a bit and on Monday 11 July the price dropped to €164,52 per MWh. That is still an extremely high price, by the way. However, the small correction in the gas price proved short-lived. At the time of writing this article, the TTF is already at €183,60 per MWh.
Concerns about the supply of sufficient gas for the coming winter still grip the market. Due to planned maintenance work, the import of Russian gas via the Nord Stream has come to a standstill. It has already been shown that it is difficult to ship parts to Russia because of the sanctions. A turbine from a pumping station that was in Canada before the war broke out, according to the company that carried out the maintenance.
Germany - which is heavily dependent on Russian gas - claims the turbine is out of sanctions. Russia made good use of the situation that had arisen and immediately reduced exports via the Nordstream. The return of the turbine also caused the dip in the gas price. There are fears that Russia is using the same tactics to keep the Nord Stream out of service for longer than its scheduled maintenance period.
Although the Nord Stream is an important transport artery, there are more pipelines between Russia and Europe. However, according to the network operators, little or no additional capacity is booked on these routes. According to analysts, this is a clear sign of the weak relationship between Russia and the EU at the moment.
More setback
Norway is the second largest gas supplier to Europe after Russia. The Scandinavian country is trying to export maximum natural gas, but an incident at the Sleipner gas field puts a spanner in the works. As a result, less gas can be pumped to mainland Europe. For the EU, this comes at an extremely unfortunate time, now that the Nord Stream has also been shut down for maintenance. This also jeopardizes the EU target to have gas storages filled to at least 80% by the coming winter.
A bright spot on the gas market is the supply of LNG. Last week it was announced that Gasunie has committed 7 billion cubic meters of LNG per year for the supply to the new terminal in Eemshaven. This temporary mobile terminal should be operational from the end of the summer.