LONDON: Prompt natural gas prices in Britain eased on Tuesday on expectations of weaker demand following forecasts for continued mild weather and above-average temperatures this month.
Prices for within-day delivery were trading at 53.55 pence per therm at 1011 GMT, down 1.45 pence since their last settlement. Prices for delivery on Wednesday were down 0.70 pence at 53.50 pence per therm.
"An increase in the temperature forecast from the end of this week going forward has led to a weaker open...," said Marcel Boonaert, head of trading at gas supply company Wingas UK.
Meteorologists forecast temperatures of nine to 12 degrees Celsius for the weekend, above averages of around seven degrees Celsius.
With supply flows at about 228.8 million cubic metres (mcm) per day on Tuesday, equal to expected demand, the system was balanced, National Grid data showed.
As demand was below normal seasonal levels, the system was able to cope with an unplanned outage at Total's St. Fergus gas terminal, along with an unplanned outage at Britain's Teesside gas processing plant.
Gas flows from Norway's Langeled pipeline to Britain are at 68 mcm/day, down slightly from Monday's average of 71 mcm/day, according to Thomson Reuters Point Carbon analysts.
The day-ahead Dutch TTF gas price was 0.05 euros higher at 22.65 euros per megawatt hour (MWh).
Nuclear outages helped limit price downside in Britain's power market. Power for day-ahead baseload delivery traded at 44.40 pounds per megawatt hour, down 60 pence.
In Europe's carbon market the benchmark EU Allowance (EUA) was steady, trading 0.02 euros lower at 6.70 euros a tonne on ICE Futures Europe.
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