LONDON: Prompt natural gas prices in Britain rose on Monday morning as outages at nuclear plants boosted demand from gas-fired power generators.
Prices for within-day delivery were trading at 54.15 pence per therm at 0945 GMT, up 0.9 pence since their last settlement. Prices for delivery on Tuesday were up 0.85 pence at 54 pence per therm.
With supply flows at about 215 million cubic metres (mcm) per day on Monday and demand expected to be about 238.2 mcm, the system was 23.2 mcm undersupplied, National Grid data showed.
Demand from British gas-fired power stations is high because of outages at several nuclear plants.
Eight reactors with a generating capacity of a little more than 4.7 gigawatts are offline after an unplanned outage left EDF Energy's Dungeness B-21 nuclear reactor out of action on Monday morning.
Nuclear usually provides about a fifth of Britain's electricity supply, but gas plants were providing around 40 percent of the country's power on Monday, National Grid data showed.
Meanwhile, gas supplies from Norway were reduced by an extension to unplanned maintenance at the Skarv field, off the Norwegian coast.
Norwegian gas system operator Gassco said on Sunday that the field will start production on Monday, but flows will remain reduced longer than previously expected.
Although Gassco did not provide an end date, Reuters calculations show that the outage, which started on Nov. 2, is now expected to end on Nov. 19.
"The volume impact of the maintenance is 10.9 mcm/day, which indicates that roughly (the) entire production from the field is closed," analysts at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon said in a daily market report on Monday.
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