Dutch prices rise on Norway's tariff extension and outage extension

Dutch wholesale gas prices increased on Monday morning. This was supported by a prolongation of Norwegian outages, and a delayed U.S. tariff on European goods. However, activity in Britain and America was low due to the holidays.

On the Intercontinental Exchange, the benchmark Dutch front-month contract was trading at 37.31 Euros per Megawatt Hour (MWH) at 0821 GMT. This is an increase of 0.73 euros.

Due to a British holiday on Monday, no British contracts were traded. A holiday in the U.S. will also impact trading.

Karsten Sander-Nielsen, an analyst at Mind Energy, said that prices fell on Friday after the threat of a 50 percent U.S. duty on European Union products.

Nielsen added that the market was back on the rise Monday as Trump had already delayed the tariffs a second time. Outages at Norwegian gas facilities also contributed to the increase in prices.

Equinor extended capacity cuts on Monday to Saturday. The massive Troll field in Norway has experienced varying levels of outages during the last week.

Gassco data shows that maintenance issues also reduced the capacity of other facilities. The flow of Norwegian gas into Europe and Britain dropped to 250.1 million cu m (mcm ) per day from 282.7 mcm/day Sunday.

Analysts at Engie EnergyScan stated in a recent note that the outages had tightened Europe's gas balance. This led to a decrease in net storage injections, and increased Europe's storage shortage.

Gas Infrastructure Europe's data shows that gas stores are 45.9% filled, which is about 22 points less than the same period last year.

The benchmark carbon contract in Europe was up 1,79 euros, at 73.35 euro per metric ton. Nora Buli, reporting from Oslo; Eileen Soreng, editing

(source: Reuters)