Prices decline on strong wind, healthy import levels

LONDON, April 9 - Dutch and British wholesale gas prices declined on Tuesday morning on strong wind output and healthy import levels.

The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub inched down by 0.19 euro to 27.49 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 0819 GMT, while the June contract was 0.33 euro lower at 27.83 euros/MWh.

In the British market, the June contract was down 0.98 pence at 68.47 pence per therm.

Wind output remains strong, with forecasts showing it to remain in a range of 11-15 gigawatts before dropping just below normal from April 18, LSEG data showed.

Temperatures in north-west Europe are also expected to rebound on Thursday and should be at around 15 degrees Celsius over the weekend.

Total Norwegian export nominations are at 333 million cubic metres (mcm) a day compared to 324 mcm/day yesterday.

An outage at the Asgard field has been extended by one day but the capacity impact has declined to 7 mcm/day from 13 mcm/day.

"TTF May 2024 prices broke yesterday the resistance of their five-day average and 20-day average," said analysts at Engie EnergyScan.

"But they remained within their volatility limit. So, nothing at this stage allows us to say that an upward trend is taking hold (which by the way would not be justified by the current comfortable spot fundamentals)," they added.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract was 0.63 euro lower at 62.88 euros per metric ton. (Reporting by Nina Chestney)