When the world’s top gas traders met in late April at a canal-side hotel on the outskirts of Amsterdam, the atmosphere was business-as-usual: coffee, croissants and wrangling over deals for the upcoming winter. Then came news of a leak at Europe’s biggest liquefied natural gas plant, located above the Arctic circle in Norway.
European gas storage is filling up quicker than demand allows with reserves set to reach maximum capacity by September, says Investec head of commodities Callum Macpherson.
Soaring gas prices across Europe reinforce the need to maintain supply from the UK North Sea, according to Oil and Gas UK (OGUK).
The scramble for gasoline this summer has thrown a lifeline to European refiners, pushing gasoline cracks to multi-year highs and tightening the market for the fuel's components, but the seasonal effect next year is likely to be more muted. Stephen George, chief economist at UK-based consultancy KBC Advanced Technologies, said demand for gasoline in the United States and China had risen by about 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) year-on-year, triggered by lower oil prices. "It's about twice as strong as distillate demand growth this year, while new market supplies are skewed to diesel," George said in the Reuters Global Oil Forum on Thursday.