Prices rise on cold snap, strikes in France

LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - British and Dutch gas prices rose on Wednesday morning due to strikes in France and an ongoing cold snap in Britain and amid concerns of Russian escalation after new intelligence pointed to a pro-Ukraine group in the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline.

The British front-month contract rose by 1.15 pence to 111.65 p/therm by 0924 GMT, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

The benchmark front-month contract at the Dutch TTF hub , a European benchmark, was up by 2.30 euros at 44.70 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

"The strikes in France are driving prices higher and the thoughts of Ukraine being involved in the Nordstream attacks makes us quite worried about more retaliation measures and prolongs the outage of Russian gas in everyone's mind," a European gas trader said.

"Given that tomorrow's demand is lower, we might get a dump at end of day but for now we expect a squeeze higher to mitigate risk of extension of strikes and further LNG outages," he added.

Nationwide strikes against pension reforms are interrupting unloadings and send-out at French terminals Fos, Montoir and Dunkerque over the coming days

Total French power supply was reduced by 10.6 gigawatts (GW) on Wednesday morning due to a strike against government pension reforms affecting nuclear, thermal and hydropower plants, operator EDF EDF.PA data showed.

The supply reduction equals about 17.5% of total production, with imports around 3.2 GW, data from grid operator RTE showed.

Rystad analyst Fabian Ronningen said the strike is affecting operations at the LNG import terminals as well as the supply/demand balance.

He added that the market is seeing a correction to price movement after a week of a pretty steep decline, where prices are back to the level we saw around the beginning of the month.

New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukraine group - likely comprised of Ukrainians or Russians - attacked the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September, but there are no firm conclusions, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, adding that there was no evidence that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy or other Ukrainian government officials were behind the attacks.

In Britain, the gas system was 18.8 million cubic meters (mcm) undersupplied this morning, National Gas data showed.

Peak wind generation was expected at around 5.5 gigawatt (GW) on Wednesday and 12.5 GW on Thursday, out of a total metered capacity of more than 22 GW, Elexon data showed.

Temperatures in north-west Europe and Britain are currently around two degrees Celsius below normal, lifting demand, but milder, windier weather is forecast from Friday.

In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract roe by 2.94 euros to 98.63 euros a tonne.