The UK spot gas market tightened Wednesday on less LNG regasification and imports through the Langeled pipeline, opening a gap between inflows and relatively strong demand.
At 11:00 am in London, the within-day and day-ahead contracts were assessed at 30.10 pence/therm and 29.75 p/th, respectively, compared to the day-ahead contract assessed at 29.525 p/th at Tuesday's 16:30 London market close.
National Grid had the UK gas system in its 10:02 am forecast as undersupplied by 6 million cu m Wednesday, with demand forecast at 220 million cu m and supply at 214 million cu m.
Higher LDZ demand was the main mover, forecast by S&P Global Platts analytics unit Eclipse Energy up 6 million cu m from Tuesday at 99 million cu m Wednesday.
Eclipse's short-term demand model is calculated from latest demand, temperature and wind speed outturns in addition to deviations between weather forecasts and these last outturns.
The UK's Met Office put London weather at a high/low of 13/11 degrees Celsius Wednesday, set to climb to 20/12 C for Thursday and Friday.
On the supply side, LNG infeed and Norwegian imports through the Langeled pipeline were seen to have edged down after 06:00 am BST Wednesday, to 40 million cu m/d and 32 million cu m/d by 11:00 BST, respectively, according to National Grid and Eclipse Energy data.
Counterbalancing these drops was additional flow from Teesside PX and Teesside BP sub-terminals, indicated at 14 million cu m/d at 10:34 am BST in National Grid figures, compared to 5 million cu m/d during Tuesday's 16:30 London market close.
In the NBP curve, the front-month June 16 contract was seen trading around 29.42 p/th on ICE at 11:00 BST, also up from Tuesday's close of 28.90 p/th.
