European spot and near curve prices strongly up

European spot and near curve gas prices increased strongly on Friday, supported by colder temperatures and lower renewable power generation.

The tension in Asian markets continued to ease on Friday. Indeed, thanks to lower power consumption, system baseload spot power prices on the Japan Electric Power Exchange for delivery today eased to €96/MWh, down from €231/MWh for delivery on Friday. JKM spot prices weakened to €35/MWh, -3.89% day-on-day. Despite this drop, the Asia-Europe gas price spread remains high enough to continue to encourage the sending of LNG cargoes to Asia to the detriment of Europe.

On the pipeline supply side, Russian flows were stable on Friday, at 317 mm cm/day on average, still significantly below the 371 mm cm/day on average of December 2020. By contrast, Norwegian flows were higher, averaging 344 mm cm/day, compared to 334 mm cm/day on Thursday, as the maintenance at the Asgard gas field ended.