European gas prices climb to highest since December 2022

The front-month Dutch TTF price jumped 3 percent at the open in Amsterdam on Friday to 92.30 euros per megawatt-hour, about 103.40 dollars and more than 30 dollars per million British thermal units, its highest since December 2022, after settling above 90 euros on Thursday. The move came as Middle East escalation continues to restrict Qatari LNG flows, some European countries have started drawing on storage as temperatures drop, and Brent crude hit a five-month high of 114 dollars a barrel.

The buffer is thin. EU storage sites were 74.62 percent full as of October 22, per Gas Infrastructure Europe data, against a five-year average of about 86 percent for this point in the year, and ING strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote that storage appears to have peaked at just under 75 percent full, with LNG flows likely to be largely absent for at least much of the northern hemisphere winter.