Injections of natural gas into the Loenhout gas storage facility in Belgium look set to hit a record for a calendar month as capacity holders seek to optimize storage capacity due to wide storage spreads on the back of the Rough maintenance, data from Fluxys showed Wednesday.
Injections into Belgium's only gas storage site for the August 1-16 period totaled 96 million cu m, already higher than the 92 million cu m injected during the whole of August 2015, at an average of 5.6 million cu m/d.
The recent trend of high injections began mid-July with 5.3 million cu m/d injected on average since July 10 compared with the 1.8 million cu m/d average for the June 1-July 9 period.
Stocks at the H-cal facility, with a maximum capacity of about 700 million cu m, stood at 516 million cu m at the beginning of Wednesday's gas day, already above the 482 million cu m Winter 2015-16 high and over 75% up on the 293 million cu m recorded at the same time last year.
With the Zeebrugge Beach prompt trading at a healthy discount to the ZEE curve, injections into Loenhout are set to remain high for the remainder of August, before September injections look set to be reduced as the facility nears full capacity and prices climb back above 30 p/th.
The ZEE balance-month contract was assessed at 28.675 pence/therm by Platts Tuesday, a 1.425 p/th discount to September 16 and almost 14 p/th shy of the Q1 2017 assessment of 42.575 p/th.
Storage spreads, mainly due to the Rough maintenance announced mid-July taking the UK's largest gas storage facility out of the Winter 2016-17 equation, are much more attractive when compared to the previous year.
In July 2015, the ZEE day-ahead averaged a 2.768 p/th discount to the Q1 2016 contract, with August 2015 seeing a 2.904 p/th discount.
Last month, day-ahead in Belgium averaged a 9.167 p/th discount to the Q1 2017 contract, with the Q1 2017/day-ahead spread widening to 10.611 p/th so far in August.
