The start of summer has brought hot weather and seasonal gas infrastructure maintenance. Together with unplanned outages at key gas and LNG export projects, the global gas balance has tightened considerably — contributing to higher gas prices in Europe and delivered LNG prices in northeast Asia. How has this changed the outlook for the months ahead? In its latest European Natural Gas Outlook, Argus sets out its view:
- Europe's storage build has lagged historical rates but remains on track to fill before winter
- North Sea maintenance is set to cut supply in the near term — but Norway may still have flexibility to produce more if prices warrant
- Hot weather in Asia-Pacific and LNG production outages have significantly reduced the availability of seaborne supply to Europe
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