The day-ahead gas price at the Dutch TTF hub rose to $199.7 per 1,000 cubic meters, a maximum of 21 months, since March 8 last year.
The reached price values are significantly higher than the prices of Gazprom's contracts, which may lead to an increase in demand for Russian gas, Interfax writes.
This December, European countries are actively using gas reserves from storage facilities; as of December 12, the dynamics of withdrawals says that up to 20 billion cubic meters of gas can be withdrawn from underground gas storage (UGS) by the end of the month. This volume is close to the January 2017 record, when 24 billion cubic meters were taken.
The storage facilities were pumped this year from April to October, the average spot price was at $82 per thousand cubic meters. Current market prices create strong incentives for the owners of reserves to bring gas to the market with a double or even triple profit.
Currently, the occupancy rate of natural gas storage facilities in Europe has reached 81.16%, which is 3.3% more than the average for the previous five seasons.
At the same time, the flow of gas into the European pipeline network through LNG terminals in December 2020 has decreased compared to December 2019 by 35%.
