LONDON, May 1 - Dutch and British wholesale gas prices were slightly lower on Wednesday morning as higher temperatures and wind output were expected and Norwegian exports to continental Europe increased.
The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub eased by 0.52 euro to 28.65 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 0913 GMT, while the July contract was 0.53 euro lower at 28.92 euros/MWh, according to LSEG data.
In the British market, the June contract was down by 1.03 pence to 70.50 pence per therm.
"Temperatures are forecast to go up, as well as wind, so demand is weak, even though there aren't many new LNG (liquefied natural gas) tanker arrivals on the near horizon," a gas trader said.
Total Norwegian export nominations to continental Europe are 16 million cubic metres (mcm) higher at 282 mcm/day, LSEG data showed.
But there are still some ongoing outages with some assets scheduled to return today and tomorrow and others later in May.
Temperatures are expected to be above the seasonal norm from the end of this week and into next week, while wind output is expected to remain high before dropping at the weekend and into next week.
Higher wind output typically decreases demand for gas from power plants.
On the supply side, there are few new LNG cargoes expected to come into north-west Europe over the next two weeks.
On Tuesday, energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies agreed to end the use of coal in power generation during the first half of the next decade, but gave leeway to Germany and Japan whose economies depend on the fuel.
Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States also said in the communique they recognised cutting Russian energy revenues was essential to support Ukraine and promised to work on further reducing imports of Moscow's gas but they did not agree any common position on possible European-wide sanctions on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract inched down by 0.67 euro to 67.85 euros per metric ton. (Reporting by Nina Chestney)