By Anna Shiryaevskaya and Elena Mazneva
Europe’s gas market crunch could return next winter, with the potential for prices to more than double with a revival in demand.
Europe’s gas market crunch could return next winter, with the potential for prices to more than double with a revival in demand.
Mild temperatures and efforts to curb consumption have seen benchmark natural gas slump to less than €40 a megawatt-hour from the record levels reached last August in the wake of Russia’s squeeze on pipeline flows. Complacency among consumers — from industries to power plants and households — risks a market tightening later this year, according to delegates at the Flame gas conference in Amsterdam.
Europe was saved this winter by mild weather and weak demand for LNG by China, but it’s uncertain whether those conditions will last. Winter-month contracts already point to gains, but the market may be underestimating how bullish it may become with the first signs of cold weather.
“Early winter cold is the scariest thing,” Samantha Dart, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. Prices above €100 are still “very realistic,” although weak demand may delay the rally the bank had previously expected in August.
It’s also unclear how much of the demand destruction — triggered by surging prices last year — is permanent, and how much is price-sensitive and may return.
The market will remain tight until new liquefied natural gas supply comes online after 2026, according to trading giant Vitol Group.
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The market “is going to be far more vulnerable to risks,” Stuart Sanders, head of short term LNG trading at Vitol, said at the conference.
