Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices fell by 2.5% on Tuesday after a four-day-long Easter holiday weekend as arrivals of LNG cargoes remain slightly above the seasonal average, easing concerns about gas storage refill in the spring and summer.
Dutch TTF Natural Gas Futures, the benchmark for Europe’s gas trading, fell by 2.5% at $49.97 (34.78 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh) as of 11:28 a.m. in Amsterdam on Tuesday.
At the end of the winter heating season, Europe had its natural gas storage sites depleted to levels last seen three years ago as a cold winter and low renewable energy output, with low wind speeds and little sunshine, forced countries to use more gas than in the past three winters.
Traders and analysts will be watching closely the pace of storage refills in the coming months, as well as LNG demand in Asia and whether North Asian demand would rise and potentially compete for spot cargoes with Europe.
Natural gas prices have eased in recent weeks, also thanks to the European Union member states agreeing to give more flexibility to the natural gas storage goals. The EU would be looking to expand the period in which countries should have 90% full storage ahead of the winter and they could deviate by up to 10% from the filling target.
Earlier this month, the EU supported the European Commission’s proposal to extend the gas storage regulation by two years. But EU member states also want more flexibility in reaching the filling target to avoid price spikes if market conditions are tight.
Earlier this year, the season to refill Europe’s natural gas storage sites presented challenges to gas traders and operators as high summer gas prices discouraged the stockpiling of the fuel.
However, the price spread between the nearest months and winter 2026 has just moved to a small contango, where the longer-dated futures prices are higher than the nearest ones. This should encourage stockpiling in the near term if the market structure remains in contango.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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