Natural Gas: Freeport outage sees TTF surge - ING

The European natural gas market surged higher yesterday with TTF settling more than 4.5% higher on the day and above EUR50/MWh - the highest level since the first trading day of 2025, ING's commodity analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey note.

Germany looks to subsidize the refill of gas storage

"The catalyst for the move appears to be an outage at the Freeport LNG export terminal in the US, which has been dealing with power issues which coincide with the freezing weather conditions the region is currently experiencing. Freeport, which has a capacity of a little more than 20bcm, said the plant will remain shut until power to the plant stabilizes."

"Europe needs to pull in more LNG this winter with the loss of Russian pipeline flows through Ukraine, along with also stronger demand. EU gas storage has now fallen to 59% and the region will need to try to make sure it stays above the European Commission's target of 50% full by 1 February."

"In addition, Germany is potentially looking at subsidizing the refill of gas storage ahead of the 2025/26 winter, a discussion we are likely to see more of across the EU with the TTF forward curve providing little incentive for players to store gas for the next winter with summer 2025 prices trading at a premium to 2025/26 winter prices."