The NBP gas market made minor gains on Wednesday in a benign market.

Gas Market

As the annual maintenance activity continued gas prices oscillated near to Tuesday’s close, with NBP curve contracts eventually closing marginally higher on Wednesday. Prices flip flopped between gains and losses for much of the session caught in a tight range. Adding support and preventing contracts from falling was the continued unplanned outage at Kollsnes which is now expected to return on Friday, although the magnitude of the outage is diminishing daily. Planned maintenance is due to kick off at the Karsto processing plant Thursday morning, impacting on 21.6mcm of gas flows, and is expected to be completed on Saturday. On the prompt the uncertainty with regard to the Kollsnes plant saw the Day ahead contract move sideways adding a mere 0.20p/th day on day.

Power Market

The GB Day ahead baseload contract fell by 5.61% despite the movements on the NBP market, closing at £71.50/MWh. Wind generation for Thursday was forecast at 10.7GW, over double the average wind generation for the period 1-28 May.  Day ahead baseload power price is 32% higher in May-24 compared to April-24, with the lack of wind generation in the month to date coinciding with a strong NBP gas market contributing to the rise. The weakness on the EUA carbon market continued Wednesday as the spot and the annual contracts out to 2026 all posted losses. Following a sustained period of strength, spot carbon has now retreated to a two-week low.

Oil Market

The Brent and WTI front month contracts fell by 0.7% and 0.8% respectively yesterday having both traded higher earlier in the day. The opening exchanges were dominated by the expectation that OPEC+ would maintain the crude oil supply cuts which helped push prices over a dollar higher.  However, as the day progressed concern for US inflationary data and the resulting impact on interest rates and likely oil demand increased. Adding to the uncertainty is the delay in the publication of stock data by the US EIA, pushed back by a day due the US holiday on Monday. The result was for the latest 3-day streak of price increases coming to a halt as the Jul-24 Brent contract fell to $83.60/bbl.