Market Insights 20/12/2024

DAILY MARKET REPORT – 20/12/2024

** Today will be our last market report of the year. We will return on 6th January 2025. We’d like to take this opportunity to wish our clients and wider readers of our daily report a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and we look forward to returning in 2025. **

The bullish sentiment continues as Russian President Putin made his annual televised address yesterday. Whilst conceding the transit deal has no possibility of being extended, as he had hoped, he also paved the way for foreign buyers of Russian gas to make payments in Roubles via any Russian bank – and not exclusively via Gazprombank. This seems to be an attempt to loosen the US sanctions recently placed and facilitate some form of continued Russian gas purchasing.

Markets reacted to the concession, which many had assumed was already ‘priced in’ for some time. It had seemed apparent for some time that no extension of the transit deal was likely.

Yesterday saw the TTF Front Month contract settle at €43.08 (from €41.01) and the NBP Front Month contract at 107.33p (from 101.50p).

Kollsnes and Karsto remain on unplanned outage this morning and we see a Norwegian flow nomination level at 335mcm (337), Russian nominations showing Velke Kapusany at 38.1mcm (38.3) and Sudzha at 42.2mcm (42.4). Nord Stream remains unavailable. EU gas storage showing at 76.73% (77.09%) full as per AGSI+. LNG vessels due to arrive in UK the next couple of weeks is 9 (8).

This morning we see the Front Month TTF contract at €45, UP €2 to the previous settlement.

A quick check on some key contracts (rounded to nearest whole):
Curve TTF Front Month €45, Front Season €43 (vs €43 and €41)
Curve NBP Front Month 107p, Front Season 103p (vs 102p and 99p)
UK Gas NBP spot 107p (from 100p)
UK Power Base spot £75 (from £63)

UK power prices show the UK Front Month Baseload contract at £93 (£88) and Front Season at £79 (£76).

In other areas of the market Brent Oil is at $73 ($73) and EUAs are at €68 (€65). Henry Hub is at $3.58 ($3.37) and JKM is at $13.46 ($13.01) with TTF Equiv of $13.11 ($12.60).

Numbers in brackets show the previous reports value.