The European gas market retreated on Thursday, erasing the gains from the prior day of trading.
According to Energi Danmark, strong renewables output overshadowed the effects of the production outages in Norway. The strike in Australia continues, but the market has already priced this in although further price reaction is expected should the strike action extend the original timeline of the end of September.
However, Chevron's two western Australian plants continued exports of LNG on Friday, despite a step-up in strikes and a fault at the Wheatstone plant that cut production by a quarter.
According to shipping data from LSEG Eikon and Kpler, JERA's tanker Pacific Enlighten docked at the Wheatstone terminal on Thursday and loaded 140,650 cm of LNG, and will be heading to Japan. The tanker Macoma loaded a cargo for China at Gorgon on Thursday.
TTF settled 4.2% lower at USD 11.1/MMBtu, while NBP was down 3.9% to USD 11.08/MMBtu.
On Thursday, EU Commissioner for energy Kadri Simson once again urged EU member states to reduce their reliance on Russian LNG.
She said: “We see that over the past seven months Russia has exported 12.4 Bcm of LNG to EU destinations. Russian LNG exports may well remain this year as high as they were last year, or even slightly bigger. We cannot be happy with that.”
“We can and we must reduce Russian LNG exports, to phase them out completely. I urge once again all companies and Member States to do their part,” Simson said.
In the US, Henry Hub rose 1% to USD 2.71/MMBtu. Natural gas futures found fresh footing after the latest government inventory report indicated further progress toward supply/demand balance and a Freeport LNG showed signs of bouncing back from an unplanned interruption.
The EIA data revealed that natural gas injections into storage in the week ending 8 September reached 57 Bcf, at the higher range of the forecast of 39-58 Bcf. This is significantly lower than the year-ago level of 74 Bcf.
Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings has revised downward its Henry Hub price deck for 2023 to USD 2.80/Mcf and USD 3.25/Mcf in 2024, from USD 3.00/Mcf and USD 3.50/Mcf respectively.
This was mainly due to expected mild winter weather from the El Niño phenomenon and continued production growth, Fitch said.
Crude prices rose on Thursday, with Brent up 2% to USD 93.7/barrel and WTI up 1.9% to USD 90.16/barrel. The price level is the highest this year, as expectations of tighter supply outweighed worries about weaker economic growth and rising US crude inventories.
Front-month futures and indexes at last close with day-on-day changes (click to enlarge): 
Time references based on London GMT. Brent, WTI, NBP, TTF and EU CO2 data from ICE. Henry Hub, JKM and API2 data from CME. Prices in USD/MMBtu based on exchange rates at last market close. All monetary values rounded to nearest whole cent/penny. Text and graphic copyright © Gas Strategies, all rights.
