European natural gas prices rose for a second session as supply risks and uncertainty about the upcoming winter outweighed rising storage levels.
Benchmark futures touched €30 following a 9.8% increase on Monday.
Norway’s Troll field is reducing capacity beyond what was in an earlier maintenance plan, according to network manager Gassco AS. Traders are closely watching flows from the country, Europe’s top supplier, after extended outages contributed to prices spikes in recent months.
While gas prices have risen this week, they remain historically low amid high inventories and tepid demand — a holdover from last year’s energy crisis. Stockpiles on the continent are about 86% full on average, much higher than usual for the time of year, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe show.
Europe’s gas market is now in a “much better” position compared with the same period last year, but it’s “not out of the woods yet,” BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Bernard Looney told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. “It really depends how much demand will recover from what we saw as a loss last winter, and what the weather will be like.”
Dutch front-month futures, Europe’s gas benchmark, rose 3.59% to €29.39 a megawatt-hour at 9:31 a.m. in Amsterdam.
--With assistance from Elena Mazneva.
