European gas prices continued to weaken yesterday, pressured by forecasts of milder weather amid ongoing strong LNG supply. The announcement of a possible Putin-Biden summit pushed prices down early in the morning. But the downtrend slightly reversed later in the day after the Kremlin spokesperson said a call or meeting between the two presidents could be set up at any time, but there were no concrete plans yet for a summit. He added that tensions were growing, but a foreign ministers’ meeting was possible this week. On the pipeline supply side, Norwegian flows recovered to 344 mm cm/day on average yesterday, compared to 320 mm cm/day on Friday. Russian supply was lower, averaging 182 mm cm/day, compared to 186 mm cm/day on Friday.
At the close, NBP ICE March 2022 prices dropped by 2.960 p/th day-on-day (-1.68%), to 173.530 p/th. TTF ICE March 2022 prices were down by €1.20 (-1.62%), closing at €72.564/MWh. On the far curve, TTF ICE Cal 2023 prices were down by 7 euro cents (-0.14%), closing at €51.591/MWh.
Yesterday, TTF ICE March 2022 prices were almost perfectly distributed around their 5-day average, reflecting the uncertainty of the market to choose a trend. They are up this morning, trading around the 20-day average and the 5-day High target, a move that can still be considered as arising from the (normal) market volatility. Therefore, these levels should set a resistance. But, obviously, any unfavorable development in the Ukrainian crisis could lead prices to break this resistance.
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