Freezing weather in northwest Europe this week is putting further pressure on gas supplies in the region. At the same time, unusually warm weather is expected in the south and east of Europe. TASR took over the report from the Bloomberg agency. The north of the UK faces snow and ice warnings on Monday, with freezing temperatures expected for most of the week.
Freezing weather will spread to France and Germany from Wednesday (08/01), boosting heating demand as Europe’s gas reserves run down at fastest pace since 2018. According to Maxar Technologies, the warning (yellow alert) against snow and ice also applies for parts of Norway, where temperatures are expected to drop to -13.5 degrees Celsius, as well as for part of the Swiss Alps, Italian Piedmont and the Aosta Valley.
The cold weather will not affect all of Europe. The Iberian Peninsula will be warmer than the seasonal average, and the Balkans are expected to be up to 10 degrees Celsius above average, according to Maxar. Meanwhile, the price of the benchmark European gas contract for February delivery on Monday on the TTF exchange in Amsterdam until 11:36 a.m. CET decreased by 1.04 euros to 48.57 euros per megawatt hour, as despite growing demand, no immediate supply shortage is expected.
But the cold weather has pushed gas stocks in Europe to just over 70%, compared with 86% a year ago. This rapid drawdown is due to increased demand for heating gas and could jeopardize efforts to build stocks for next winter. European gas inventories have already fallen 25 percentage points from their peak, the steepest drop since 2018.
Europe’s dependence on liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, replacing Russian flows with a pipeline, increases the risk of price fluctuationswith unplanned outages such as the shutdown of Norway’s Hammerfest LNG plant exacerbating their volatility.
