Global gas & LNG weekly summary: 25 March 2022

Global prices bounce due to renewed fears surrounding Russian supply TTF jumped over $8 from its trough of about US$28 earlier this week to about US$36 on Wednesday, as a result of the market assigning a larger risk premium to potential supply disruptions in Russian flows to Europe, amid the Russian government declaring that natural gas sales would be conducted only in rubles to countries labeled “unfriendly countries”. Notably, all EU countries are currently on Russia’s “unfriendly” list. Fundamentally, loosening factors like falling demand and an increase in LNG send-out were offset by a drop in production and pipeline imports from Russia. Russian flows dropped approximately 14% this week. The drops were seen on Yamal-Europe and NordStream 1. The drop in flows on NordStream 1 are surprising given how consistent flows on that pipe have been over the last 5 years, even when flows along other routes have varied greatly.