European and UK gas prices are trading flat week on week. Despite bearish momentum kicking in at the start of the week after U.S President Trump gave Russia 50 more days to make a peace deal to avoid further sanctions, unplanned outages in Norway over the last couple of days reversed the course. Tighter fundamentals and ongoing maintenance risks have influenced market sentiment.
Nyhamna and Kollsnes were suffering from external power issues causing flows towards the UK and NWE to reduce significantly. Total nominations were down to around 260 mcm/d on Wednesday and Thursday, down 60 mcm/d when compared to Monday. As things stand the outage is expected to be back by Friday. Two years ago, Nyhamna was on an unplanned outage for nearly 2 months which caused prices to rally. However the issue was caused by the discovery of hydrogen in the facilities cooling circuits, which took time to investigate and clear, whilst a power failure is a more routine issue. Should flows return to normal the fundamental tightness is likely to ease.
Gas storage inventories are now 63.49% full, more than 20% below 2024 levels, according to analyst estimates. LNG send outs are relatively steady despite Asian LNG demand picking up and demand levels in both UK and Europe should be stable following recent heatwaves.
In other news this week the EU is failing to approve a new package of sanctions against Russia as Slovakia continues to seek resolution to its gas supply issues. Sefe’s Rehden storage is now also actively auctioning capacities for the storage year 2025/2026 but has failed to allocate any more capacities on Tuesday as well as on Thursday.
Flagship Energy’s Tejal Shah Energy Markets Update – 17th July 2025 appeared first on Energy Live News.