Prices rise on reduced Norwegian supplies

01 Jul, 2019

* Britain's day-ahead gas price rose by 0.70 pence to 25.00 pence per therm by 0822 GMT.

* Gas for immediate delivery was up by 0.50 pence at 24.50 pence per therm.

* Reduced supplies from Norway were the main reason prices in Britain declined on Monday, a UK gas trader said.

* Britain's total imports from Norway were expected at 36 million cubic metres (mcm) on Monday, 23 mcm short of Friday's levels.

* The reason Norwegian supplies were so low was an unexpected outage at the country's Nyhamna gas processing plant due to a compressor failure. The outage is cutting output by 18 mcm per day and is expected to last until the end of the week.

* Nyhamna's outage added to ongoing maintenance at Norway's giant Troll gas field and caused flows to Britain via Langeled, the largest pipeline between the two countries, to decline to 17 mcm/day, from 41 mcm/day on Friday.

* Britain's gas system was only slightly oversupplied by 3.5 mcm as a result on Monday, with demand forecast at 156.2 mcm and supply at 159.7 mcm/day, according to National Grid data.

* Power generation from wind turbines is also expected to decline on Tuesday and usually lower wind output means more demand for gas from power plants.

* Peak wind generation is forecast at around 10.2 gigawatts (GW) on Monday, but is expected to fall to 4.3 GW on Tuesday, Elexon data shows.

* Average daily temperatures in Britain are forecast to reach 15.7 degrees Celsius on Monday and are seen falling to 14.6C on Tuesday.

* Two liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes are expected in Britain by July 15.

* Day-ahead gas price at the Dutch TTF hub rose by 0.28 euro to 9.78 euros per megawatt hour (MWh).

* Benchmark Dec-19 EU carbon contract was up by 0.62 euro at 26.90 euros a tonne.

Copyright Reuters, 2019

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