April 26 - Dutch and British wholesale gas prices were slightly lower on Friday morning as forecasts for milder weather outweighed the impact of Norwegian outages and concerns over liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply.
The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub was down by 0.40 euro at 29.56 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) at 0901 GMT, LSEG data showed.
The Dutch day-ahead contract was down 0.75 euro at 29.75 euros/MWh.
In the British market, the day-ahead contract was down 1.25 pence at 76.00 pence per therm, while the within-day contract was down 0.35 pence at 77.00 p/therm.
The weather is warming up rapidly which will lower gas demand, LSEG gas analyst Saku Jussila said.
On the supply side, Norwegian pipeline supply is down 11% week-on-week to 273.8 million cubic meters (mcm) per day, Rystad Energy analyst Kaushal Ramesh said.
"Heavy maintenance is scheduled in the weeks ahead that could support prices," he added.
Still, Norwegian supply in May is expected to average 296 mcm/day, up from 262 mcm/day in May 2023.
An outage at Norway's Hammerfest LNG terminal, expected to end tomorrow, would have little overall impact, Ramesh added.
News of continued issues regarding maintenance at U.S. LNG plant Freeport could provide some market support, consultancy Auxilione said in its daily market report.
The second-largest U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility has been running below 80% of its capacity due to technical problems.
In other news, the European Commission's could propose restrictions on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the first time in its next sanctions package, but likely focus on sanctioning as yet non-operational export projects.
"The European market can weather quite a few market-tightening risks due to its storage surplus to recent years and the potential for gas-to-coal switching in the power sector," analysts at Energy Aspects said in a weekly report.
Europe's gas storage sites are around 61.7% full, still at record highs for the time of year despite some net withdrawals amid this week's cold spell, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe.
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract fell by 0.97 euro to 67.42 euros per metric ton. (Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo; editing by Nina Chestney)