Sharp drop in European prices

European gas prices dropped significantly yesterday, both on the spot and the curve. With spot fundamentals almost unchanged, the bearish movement seems to have been triggered by the sharp decline in EUA prices, which pulled parity prices with coal for power generation significantly down, a signal that led to a selloff by some financial participants willing to take their profits, particularly as curve prices were technically overbought.

On the pipeline supply side, Norwegian flows were very slightly up yesterday, averaging 286 mm cm/day, compared to 285 mm cm/day on Monday, still significantly below the 315 mm cm/day of early May. As for Russian flows, they were stable, at 331 mm cm/day on average.