Global natural gas prices continued to trade sideways on Monday as ample supplies were available and forecasts were largely unchanged.
European and Asian benchmarks were trading in a narrow range. The Title Transfer Facility (TTF) in Europe rebounded on Monday, but picked up little and finished near $11/MMBtu.
In Asia, Japan-Korea Marker (JKM) prices were stable at around $12. In the United States, Henry Hub continued to hover below the $3 mark.
“Most of the activity in the past week has revolved around perceived activity and weather forecasts in Asia,” said Rystad Energy analyst Lu Ming Pang. “A potentially warm summer in the northern hemisphere is being assessed by market players, although the current high prices are incentivizing a more patient approach to evaluating summer demand.”
Chevron Corp. said over the weekend it returned the Wheatstone LNG export terminal in Western Australia to service. The 8.9 million metric tons/year liquefied natural gas facility was taken offline June 10 for repairs to a fuel gas system on a platform offshore that feeds the terminal.
“Chevron Australia has resumed full LNG and domestic gas production rates at the Wheatstone gas facility with the safe restart of the facility’s two LNG trains and domestic gas plant,” a spokesperson told NGI.
Hotter weather in Asia and Europe is driving cooling demand this week and the return of Wheatstone means additional supplies for the Asian market. Wheatstone exports all of its cargoes to Asia, mainly to Japan, which accounted for nearly 70% of all the facility’s offtake last year, according to Kpler.
Russia also has resumed LNG shipments from the Arctic on the Northern Sea Route. The Eduard Toll ice-class vessel was loaded and sailing on the faster route to Asia now that temperatures have eased. It had no destination on Monday, according to Kpler vessel-tracking data.
Meanwhile, TTF crept upward on Monday as unplanned outages at the Visund and Dvalin fields offshore Norway were expected to continue, according to grid operator Gassco AS. An outage at the Hammerfest LNG plant in Norway because of a power supply issue was expected to end Monday night.
Storage stocks on the continent continued to fill, however, with inventories at 74% of capacity, compared to the five-year seasonal average of 64%. That puts the continent on track to finish the injection season with fully stocked storage caverns as it did in 2019 and 2023, according to UK consultancy Auxilione.
In the United States, where the eastern part of the country has been blanketed by searing temperatures over the past week, weather is expected to remain hot over the 15-day period. The ongoing cooling demand helped lift the Henry Hub August contract by 11 cents to $2.81 on Monday, despite other more bearish fundamentals.
Wood Mackenzie data showed U.S. natural gas production averaging 100.8 Bcf/d over the past week. The firm’s Monday forecast showed output at 100.4 Bcf/d.
LNG feed gas demand also crumbled over the weekend to six-week lows amid planned seasonal maintenance.
Flows to LNG export facilities were forecast at 12.5 Bcf/d on Monday, according to Wood Mackenzie data. Demand for natural gas for LNG had fallen to 11.5 Bcf/d on Friday.
In other U.S. news last week, FERC indicated it would vote on Venture Global LNG Inc.’s CP2 export facility. A decision on the project is on the agenda for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s meeting on Thursday.
The CP2 facility has been pending before the Commission for more than 10 months, one of the longest periods an export project has waited for a decision. FERC has wrestled with how to address emissions from the facility, which has been a flashpoint in environmentalists’ efforts to slow the export buildout in the United States.
Elsewhere on Monday, Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co. Ltd., which holds LNG assets, said it had acquired 46,500 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas for an undisclosed amount.
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) adopted its 14th package of sanctions against Russia on Monday, including a ban on the transhipments of LNG from EU ports. The sanctions will take effect after a nine-month transition period. Reuters reported that they would also target 27 oil and LNG tankers.
In the Netherlands, NV Nederlandse Gasunie and Royal Vopak NV said they were exploring the possibility of keeping EemsEnergyTerminal in operation at the port of Eemshaven for longer than originally planned.
The floating LNG import terminal can take in about 282 Bcf of the super-chilled fuel. Gasunie said it would consider keeping the floating storage and regasification units there in operation beyond September 2027 to shore up regional energy security.
Similar decisions could be made across the continent and keep the FSRU market tight in the years ahead as Asian importers look to add more infrastructure.
