Wholesale UK gas prices edged higher Tuesday morning with the UK gas system undersupplied despite demand remaining below average for the time of year as lower UK gas production and a drop in Norwegian gas imports supported the NBP spot in early trading.
National Grid gas demand forecasts were at 211 million cubic meters at 10:00 am London time, 4 million cu m lower than the seasonal norm, with physical flows recorded at 207 million cu m.
The NBP spot was trading above Monday's close as a result of the undersupply, with within-day and day-ahead both up over a penny from the previous close at 52 pence/therm and 51.90 p/th respectively.
Flows through the Dimlington terminal remain at zero after an unplanned outage reported by operator Perenco late Monday morning with flows expected to remain at zero for Tuesday's gas day according to the latest REMIT message on the National Grid website -- flows were at 10 million cu m/d prior to the outage.
Norwegian gas imports have fallen from Monday afternoon, with Gassco reporting flow rates of 82 million cu m/d at 10:30 am. Langeled flows were down at 54 million cu m/d after having been as high as 66 million cu m/d Monday afternoon.
Imports from the Netherlands via the Bacton BBL pipeline edged higher Tuesday morning to 16 million cu m, 4 million cu m/d up on rates 24 hours earlier -- LNG supply has also risen slightly from the South Hook terminal to 15 million cu m from 12 million cu m Monday.
Despite several LNG tankers en route to Europe, none of these are expected to berth at UK LNG terminals in the short term, according to Platts unit Bentek Energy.
Storage withdrawals were seen overnight by three medium-range gas storage facilities, with the Hole House Farm facility remaining active Tuesday morning with flow rates of 7 million cu m/d.
However, UK gas storage facilities are 99.7% full with 4.930 billion cu m according to National Grid storage data, with Easington Rough now having 3.749 Bcm in stock, a record high.
Interconnector exports remain firm despite the fact that the ZEE/NBP day- ahead basis closed at a mere 0.20 p/th discount for Zeebrugge to NBP Monday, with IUK 10:00 am nominations at 31 million cu m.
The firmer spot market has provided support to the NBP curve in early trading. Front-month November was seen trading at 53.50 p/th at 11:00 am compared with Monday's close of 53.15 p/th with Summer 15 edging higher to 52.25 p/th.
