(Adds background, gas prices)
LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) - The gas market has faced a
"perfect storm" of cold weather, supply concerns and increased
demand but it will stabilise eventually, an executive at Royal
Dutch Shell said on Tuesday.
"This turbulence will pass. It might take a while, but the
market will stabilise at sensible levels," De la Rey Venter,
executive vice president at LNG West, which handles Shell's
natural gas assets in Canada, Europe Africa and Latin America,
told a virtual conference.
Gas prices in Europe and Asia have surged this year to
record highs, causing manufacturers to curtail activity from
Spain to Britain and sparking power crises in China.
Regional natural gas markets in the United States have also
registered record prices for this winter, suggesting that energy
bills causing headaches in Europe and Asia will hit the world's
top gas producer before long.
Dutch and British wholesale gas prices surged to record
highs in several contracts on Tuesday afternoon amid wider
energy market price increases, continuing supply concerns,
colder weather forecasts and a cut in French nuclear generation
because of a strike.
In Asia, the focus of LNG trade, spot LNG prices <LNG-AS>
hit a record of $34.47 per million British thermal units (mmBtu)
last week, up about 100% from a month ago and more than 500%
from the same period last year.
(Reporting by Marwa Rashad
Editing by Edmund Blair and David Goodman)
