UK GAS-Prices rise as Norwegian maintenance curbs supply

British wholesale gas prices firmed on Wednesday morning as Norwegian maintenance outages curbed supply.

The within-day contract rose by 0.60 pence to 22.50 p/therm by 0840 GMT.

The day-ahead contract was 0.20 pence higher at 22.00 p/therm.

"We are going into a relatively tight period with quite a lot of NCS (Norwegian Continental Shelf) maintenance," said one analyst.

Revised September weather forecasts showing less wind output and strong US gas prices at Henry Hub also added support, he said.

Nominations for gas through the Norwegian Langeled pipeline are down by 11 million cubic metres (mcm) from Tuesday amid several maintenance outages and there are further planned works to commences in the coming days.

"Several upcoming maintenances may impact Norwegian production from next week," Refinitiv gas analysts said.

However, the UK gas system was oversupplied by 12 mcm, with demand forecast at 146 mcm and supply at 158 mcm, National Grid data showed.

Still, prices had some potential downside due to lower gas-for-power demand, Refinitv analysts said.

Peak wind generation was forecast at 10.5 gigawatts (GW) on Wednesday, out of capacity of 18 GW, and was expected to rise to 12.4 GW on Thursday, Elexon data showed.

Gas-for-power demand is forecast to drop to 29 mcm on Thursday, from 40 mcm on Tuesday, Refinitiv data showed.

The September contract rose by 0.37p to 22.70 p/therm.

The day-ahead gas price at the Dutch TTF hub rose by 0.24 euros to 8.30 euros per megawatt hour.

Month-ahead Dutch gas at the TTF hub gained 0.10 euros to 8.85 euros per megawatt hour.

The benchmark Dec-20 EU carbon contract CFI2Zc1 was down 0.03 euros at 26.52 euros a tonne.