Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, said colder-than-average weather across the EU "is a stronger driver" than the halt in Russian NatGas exports via Soviet-era pipelines running through Ukraine, which will, in turn, pressure EU NatGas prices higher. By Friday, EU NatGas prices reached levels not seen in over a year, exceeding 50 EUR/MWh.
"While this week's key headline in natural gas has been the halt in the residual Russian gas flows through Ukraine, the main tightening driver of NW European gas fundamentals this winter is in our view colder-than-average weather currently forecast for the next two weeks, aided by low wind power and Norwegian production outages observed in December," Dart said.
She continued: "If this cold forecast realizes without other offsets, we see significant risks that TTF prices rally towards oil-switching economics in a 63-84 EUR/MWh range in the coming months, well above our 40 EUR/MWh 2025 TTF base case under average weather, to help manage European gas storage."
OPEC+ May Be Facing Long-Term Production Cuts
The latest data from Bloomberg shows that EU Natgas storage is 71.8% full at the start of the new year—this is well below the 16-year average of 74.29% for the same point in time. This indicates that increased heating demand and tightening supplies will force the continent to draw down supplies at the quickest rate in four years.
Higher energy prices in the EU, particularly in Germany—the continent's economic powerhouse—add to the continued headwinds crushing the country's all-important automotive industry into a devastating downturn.
On the bright side, at least for the US, the EU will be forced to replace Russian LNG with US LNG during the Trump 2.0 era. Dart noted last month that this is "theoretically" possible.
Oilprice