Prices gain on North Sea outages

Dutch and British wholesale gas prices traded higher on Wednesday morning, as planned and unplanned outages in Norway and Britain tightened the supply picture, offsetting a return to milder temperatures.

The benchmark front-month contract (TRNLTTFMc1) at the Dutch TTF hub was up 0.43 euro to 28.95 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) at 0817 GMT, LSEG data showed.

The Dutch day-ahead contract was up 0.27 euro at 29.50 euros/MWh.

In the British market, the within-day contract (TRGBNBPWKD) was up 1.75 pence at 72.75 pence per therm and the day-ahead contract (TRGBNBPD1) traded 2.40 pence higher at 73.60 p/therm.

The flow of Norwegian gas to Britain was down 26 million cubic metres (mcm) per day compared with Tuesday, while unplanned outages in the UK at Bacton Seal and Bacton Perenco cut 8 mcm/day of supply, LSEG analyst Saku Jussila said in a daily research note.

Further Norwegian maintenance scheduled from Thursday would cut another 39 mcm/day, according to Jussila.

"Due to Norwegian maintenance action, NEW balance is still quite tight and significant withdrawals from storages are needed. This should add some bullish pressure," the analyst said.

Europe's gas storage sites are around 62% full and saw a small dip for April 22, the most recent data point published by Gas Infrastructure Europe.

Further market support stemmed from the unplanned outage at Norway's Hammerfest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.

The plant in Arctic northern Norway was evacuated on Tuesday because of a gas leak during maintenance and will remain offline until Friday, operator Equinor EQNR said.

"In addition to geopolitical risk factors, this is the kind of incident that prevents the market from being completely calm and to hesitate to take a decidedly bearish stance," analysts at Engie EnergyScan said in their daily report.

However, the potential for prices to move higher is limited by bearish fundamental factors such as a return to milder weather from the weekend following the current cold spell, analysts said.

Meanwhile, the first tanker in 12 days set sail from major U.S. LNG export terminal Freeport on Tuesday, signalling the resumption of gas processing after an outage this month that raised concerns over supplies.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract (CFI2Zc1) was up 1.04 euro at 66.71 euros per metric ton.