This European gas market review presents the November 2020 market data for Northwest Europe. Metrics include gas prices, demand, supply balance, production, LNG, pipeline, and storage.
Highlights of our November 2020 report include:
- Gas prices: average NW European gas prices increased by 6%, to 15€/MWh, month-on-month in November due to increased gas demand for heating and power. NBP prices saw the largest increase, up 11%, as indigenous production struggled to keep up with rising GB demand due to several outages at UKCS facilities
- Consumption: gas consumption in NW Europe was down 12% year-on-year, led primarily by Germany (-1.6bcm) and GB (-1.2bcm). The decline was approximately equally driven by residential and power sectors
- Supply: storage increased its share of the European supply mix by 2%-points year-on-year in November, at the expense of LNG. Russian and Norwegian pipeline contributed 31% and 32% of supply respectively, seeing a combined increase of 8 percentage points in market share over the same time period. This increase helped offset declined indigenous production and LNG imports
- Indigenous production: driven by lower gas demand than last year, Dutch production fell by 38% year-on-year in November. GB production also decreased by 10% due to both unplanned and planned maintenance at various fields (e.g., Cygnus, Teesside Cats, Barrow etc.)
- Pipeline imports: NW European pipe imports were broadly flat with November 2019. Within the Russian pipeline network, a 0.6bcm decrease in flows via Nord Stream was mostly compensated by a 0.6bcm increase in flows via the Czech route
- LNG: LNG volumes were 12% higher month-on-month across NW Europe. GB saw the largest absolute increase in regasification terminal utilisation increase by 53% across the same time period, to fill the supply gap left by indigenous production and Norwegian pipeline supply
- Storage: despite lower gas demand, storage withdrawals were up 31% year-on-year as a result of lower LNG send-outs
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