Full storage, weak demand from Europe and an easing of concerns about LNG shortages caused prompt prices and front curve contracts to plunge Monday morning on the UK NBP gas trading hub.
Concerns of a shortage of LNG supplies had been supporting the market, but opinion may be shifting, a trader said.
"The signs are good that there will be plenty of LNG.
"The fact it [LNG flows] didn't turn down when the prices dropped suggests they need to get rid of the gas to make room for more," the trader said.
On the prompt, losses from Friday's close were around 7 pence/therm with the within-day contract falling to 47.00 p/th and day-ahead at 48.25 p/th.
Also, "there is a lack of places to put gas -- storage is full," he said The October contract fell 3.05 p/th from Friday to 57.80 p/th.
"There's still no real strong demand from Europe, either" a trader said.
Customer nominations for exports from the UK into Belgium on the cross-channel Interconnector pipeline are 32.57 million cubic meters on Monday - about 20 million cu m short of daily averages in the two weeks leading up to the September 7 closure for maintenance.
Q4 and Winter 11 are down about two pence from Friday, at 67.00 p/th and 70.90 p/th, respectively.
Further out, losses weren't as sharp.
Summer 12 fell by a penny to 65.10 p/th and Winter 12 fell by 0.65 p/th to 74.50 p/th.
On the supply side, the system opened about 30 million cu m long.
By noon London time, as flows from BBL Bacton ramped down by about 8 million cu m/d to around 14 million cu m/d, supply fell closer to demand, but was still long by 12 million cu m, at 228.3 million cu m.
Flows from the South Hook LNG terminal remain strong at about 43 million cu m/d and supply from the Isle of Grain has ramped up to in excess of 20 million cu m.
Three LNG tankers are scheduled to arrive in the next week. The Al Sadd LNG tanker, on September 28 and the Al Samriya on October 2, at the South Hook terminal, and the Al Aamriya, also on October 2, at the Dragon LNG terminal.
