European gas prices bounce back

European gas prices eroded most of Wednesday’s losses in another extremely volatile session on Thursday: more than 2 euros between the intraday high and the intraday low for the TTF front-month contract and more than 1 euro for the TTF front-year contract. Tight short-term fundamentals and a rebound in coal and EUA prices were the main bullish drivers. Indeed, stock levels are now below 2018 lows in Germany and the Netherlands (respectively at 28.2% and 18.5% fullness rate) while injection rates remain very low as well amid persisting below-average temperatures. An unplanned outage affecting the Oseberg gas field in Norway was also supportive. Latest comments from Gazprom’s executive Burmistrova on storage injections may have also been interpreted as not really reassuring regarding the comfort of European gas balances this summer.