LONDON: British wholesale gas prices rose on Monday morning on the back of reduced supply from Norway and low wind output which increased demand from gas plants.
* Day-ahead gas price up 1.85 pence to 37.75 pence per therm at 0733 GMT.
* The month-ahead contract was 1.48 pence higher at 37.38 pence per therm.
* "Wind output is very low, driving gas-for-power demand. Norway supply is lower than last week this morning," a gas trader said.
* Demand is forecast at 173 million cubic metres (mcm) and supply at 166 mcm/day, leaving the system undersupplied by 7 mcm, according to National Grid data.
* Total Norwegian flows to Britain are 11 mcm lower than the previous working day at 61 mcm/day. There is an unplanned outage at the Aasta Hansteen gas field which is expected to end today.
* Peak wind generation is forecast at nearly 1.8 gigawatts (GW), falling to 1.2 GW on Tuesday, out of a total metered capacity of around 12 GW, Elexon data shows.
* Low wind output typically increases demand from gas-to-power plants.
* Even though prices were higher on Monday, they have declined steadily over the first half of this year, mostly due to oversupply in the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market which has seen surplus cargoes going to Europe.
* "The market has been pricing in an acute but temporary oversupply of gas across the current summer. This is the result of surplus LNG flowing into Europe, unusually low storage injection demand and falling coal prices," said analysts at consultancy Timera Energy.
* In the Dutch gas market, day-ahead price at the TTF hub was up 0.75 euro at 13.75 euros per megawatt hour.
* Benchmark Dec-19 EU carbon contract hit a fresh 11-year high in earlier trade above 29 euros a tonne. It was up 0.19 euro at 28.98 euros a tonne at the time of writing.
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