Prices rebound slightly ahead of more Norwegian outages

LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Dutch and British wholesale gas prices rebounded slightly on Tuesday morning as the impact of the restart of the Norwegian Nyhamna gas processing plant faded, and as more maintenance outages are expected in August.

The benchmark front-month Dutch contract edged up by 0.86 euro to 25.75 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 0827 GMT, while the September contract was 1.20 euros higher at 28.30 euros/MWh, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

The British day-ahead price was 1.00 pence higher at 62.00 pence per therm.

Prices weakened early on Monday after maintenance work at the Nyhamna gas processing plant in Norway finished, boosting Norwegian gas flows.

Norwegian gas flows are back above 320 million cubic metres (mcm) per day, which is the highest level since mid-April, said analysts at ING Economics.

"There is a fair amount of further maintenance scheduled for August, which will likely see flows reduce once again. But for now, the resumption of flows has helped European storage build at a quicker pace in the last few days," they said.

In August, the Troll field and the Kollsnes gas processing plant will undergo maintenance.

The Vesterled pipeline will also have its capacity cut in August and will be completely offline from tomorrow to July 21.

Total north-west Europe liquefied natural gas (LNG) send-out is slightly lower at 1,961 gigawatt hours per day (GWh/d) from 2,126 GWh/d the previous day, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

Meanwhile, southern Europe is experiencing an intense heatwave which could increase gas demand for cooling although solar output has been very high.

The World Meteorological Organization said on Monday that a heatwave affecting the Mediterranean is forecast to intensify by mid-week and is likely to continue into August in some places.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract edged up by 0.23 euro to 86.72 euros a tonne.

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