LONDON: Day-ahead natural gas prices in Britain rose on Wednesday, with scheduled maintenance on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) likely to reduce gas supplies from Norway on Thursday.
Prices for delivery on Thursday rose 0.7 pence to 55.5 pence per therm at 0930 GMT
"There is scheduled field maintenance tomorrow on an NCS field, with a volume impact of 16 million cubic metres a day (mmcm/d). This is likely to impact Norwegian deliveries to the UK market," analysts at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon said in a daily report.
The field maintenance is due to start at 0500 GMT on Thursday and finish at 0500 GMT on Friday, gas system operator Gassco said on its website.
Gas for within-day delivery traded at 55.7 pence per therm, up 0.2 pence since the last settlement.
With supply flows at about 279.1 mcm/d on Wednesday and demand expected to be about 296.2 mcm, the system was 17.1 mcm undersupplied, National Grid data showed.
Further along the curve, the first-quarter 2015 gas contract was 0.4 pence higher at 55.4 pence per therm.
Analysts at Energy Aspects trimmed their price forecast for the first quarter of 2015 to 58 pence from 60 pence per therm in a research note published on Wednesday.
The analysts said the reduction was because of high levels of gas in storage but added that there is still a risk that colder weather could increase gas demand in the latter half of December.
In the Netherlands, the day-ahead gas price at the TTF hub was 0.03 euros lower at 23.20 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh).
The benchmark European Union carbon price slipped 0.01 euros to 6.73 euros a tonne on ICE Futures Europe.
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