Spot gas prices jumped on the UK's NBP Thursday, as imports from Norway ticked down and exports to the European continent rose, balancing spot fundamentals.
At 11:00 am in London, the within-day and day-ahead contracts were at parity, both assessed at 30.30 pence/therm respectively, compared with Wednesday's day-ahead close of 28.25 p/th.
System operator National Grid had demand for the day in its 10:00 am forecast pegged at 213 million cu m/d, down 3 million cu m/d, while forecast flows were put at 212 million cu m/d, down 18 million cu m/d, bringing the fundamentals closer to a balance than Tuesday and Wednesday, when the spot market took heavy losses.
On the supply side, daily average flow from Norway via the Langeled interconnector was nominated at 13 million cu m, down a hefty 27 million cu m for Wednesday, according to Eclipse Energy, an analytics unit of S&P Global Platts.
This constitutes the primary drop in supply for Thursday.
On the demand side, Thursday is scheduled to see a considerable jump in exports to the European continent, from 25 million cu m to 37 million cu m, according to Eclipse, which also seems to have lent support to UK spot prices.
LDZ demand for Thursday was nominated at 112 million cu/d, down 7 million cu/d from the most recent data for Wednesday, according to Eclipse Energy, with the figure for Friday pegged even lower at 107 million cu m/d.
Eclipse's short-term demand model is calculated from the latest demand, temperature and wind speed outturns in addition to deviations between weather forecasts and these last outturns.
The weather is forecast to warm up further towards the end of the week and into the next one.
London is forecast at a high/low of 19/11 degrees Celsius Thursday, rising to 24/14 C by the end of the week, the UK's Met Office said.
In the curve, by contrast, trading early in the day indicated clear gains, with the front-month June contract seen changing hands at 29.65 p/th, compared with an assessment of 27.85 p/th in Wednesday's Platts Market on Close process.
Meanwhile, supporting the bullishness of the curve, the ICE Brent front-month futures contract was seen trading at $45.49/b at 1128 BST, up 87 cents/b on the day.
