European prices extended gains

European gas prices increased sharply on Friday. In addition to persistent concerns about Russian flows via Ukraine, there was the effect of the fall in temperatures below normal and the strong drop in Norwegian flows. Indeed, due to a technical outage at the giant Troll field, Norwegian flows collapsed to 260 mm cm/day on Friday, compared to 306 mm cm/day on Thursday. Russian flows were slightly down, at 327 mm cm/day on average, compared to 329 mm cm/day on Thursday.

The rise in Asia JKM prices and parity prices with coal for power generation (both EUA and coal prices were up) provided additional support, particularly for curve prices.