Tom Haddon

As an addendum. It's a fairly safe bet that European gas demand is going to break downwards on the 2024/25 levels - already about 5% down in March vs last year and testing the 2024 record low.

That's 20-30% lower than Russia crisis-era. Again, a reason why conditions are not quite as fraught.

Case in point, oil storage release of 400m barrels of crude and products. Prices still rising...upwards death spiral loading.

Oil on the other hand, oh boy, Asia is on the hook there (as is Europe of course) so that is the market where you may well find the upwards death spiral if supply continues to be disrupted.

Depends how much demand destruction can kick in.

Then the question for oil markets is; does it come back?

So Asian economies have more scope to be reactive to price. If Europe can't pay, people freeze to death.

Slightly different price elasticities of demand going on when Asian economies face gas supply issues, so prices won't be driven as high as Europe will pay anything, Asia won't.

This is another reason why the gas crisis will not be anywhere as intense in Europe as 2022.

Broadly; the missing LNG was destined for Asia. However, gas in Asian energy systems is not as mission critical as in NW Europe, it mostly feeds industry, in Europe it is space heating with some power gen.

Reloaded Chinese LNG cargoes (of probably Australian origin) just serenely chugging past the entrance to the Strait on the way to European terminals, giving a cheery wave.

Serious point coming up below...

Well that's my IT career down the drain. No idea what's happened there.

OK, have another one. The bonfire of the short positions in TTF gas. Ouch.

The profit taking on the long positions. Nice.

Graph of the day alert. Stolen from @davidawatson.bsky.social on LinkedIn.

The way the price cap works; the longer this goes on, the closer that dotted line will get to the coloured lines, and the further higher the p/kWh rate will go for standard variable tariffs.

Well, I think it's pretty easy to grow plants in a desert. If you're going to suggest problems, at least make them hard ones.

Cardiff set to impose SUV parking premium after council approval Owners of large cars such as SUVs would be charged more to encourage switching to smaller vehicles.

I'm more in favour of starting psychological war against people who drive stupid cars. Policy to slowly ramp up annoyance levels.

Cardiff has made a good first step. Next should be they have to mount flags on each corner of the car and pay £5 per flag per month.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

GB power gen is from BMRS: bmrs.elexon.co.uk/actual-or-es...

Wind speeds: zoom.earth/maps/wind-sp...

Wholesale price reporting: www.northerngasandpower.energymarketprice.com/dailymarketi...

Other stuff stolen mostly from equity analyst reports I get.

Which bit? There is a smorgasbord here.

I have no idea if I have spelt that right.

I'm not saying the GB/EU power system is shielded from gas price carnage, it most definitely is not.

It is just not facing the same 2022 grade cluster spasm, plus more capacity, so prices won't be anywhere near as extreme, especially as March is where solar PV kicks in.

Touching 10GW y'day in GB.

Then layer on maybe 200 GW of additional solar PV across Europe and 20GWh of BESS storage and everything is a lot calmer.

In GB specifically we have canned 5 GW of coal capacity since Russia but added 11-12 GW of renewables, mostly offshore wind (5 GW) - with it being windy right now.

Well first of all, the Russia issue hit as French nuclear was falling over, and Norwegian hydro (and other places) were running low on stocks. Bad, bad place to be.

Since then French nuclear has resurrected itself and Europe looks really well supplied for power at least:

bsky.app/profile/tomh...

Compared to 2022, the gas side of this crisis is translating differently to power.

*This is just a snapshot alert* but look at these recent days in GB wholesale markets. Gas at ~£40MWh, power at £50-60/MWh - that power price is barely/not covering the cost of burning gas.

So what's going on?

Wonderful stuff. Not a quote/joke I was aware of, but definitely stealing it.

I am really happy to report that Kathryn Porter is still going strong and adding countries to her 'black out prediction' tombola machine at a healthy rate.

It might be a volatile world out there, but at least we can find stability somewhere.

Also I do enjoy the initial opening that *this* gas price crisis proves the economic case of renewables.

Think it might have been the last one, personally, which didn't really finish before this one started.

The Iran oil crisis has proved Ed Miliband right on green energy. But households still need more help | Mathew Lawrence Britain’s whole energy economy needs to be reformed – decarbonising the grid is only part of the mix, says director of Common Wealth, Mathew Lawrence

Wow, an article that says to 'break the link', and then explains how that would be done. Big admiration for that, I do not have to tap the sign!

The idea needs interrogation (a mix of market bifurcation with an 'Iberian exception' twist?), but fair play.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

History doesn't repeat. It just moves to other commodity markets.

I'm not sure this is going to be an energy price 'spike' shaped crisis, guys.

Going to have to go dust off the 'table mountain' analogies & 'high energy price plateau' explanations on this report.

Now you know why oil producers really don't want this to continue.

bsky.app/profile/tomh...

Many areas of the world experienced this in gas just a couple of years ago. Europe was writing (state funded) blank cheques like it was going out of fashion, and places like Pakistan couldn't get an LNG shipment as the ability to pay evaporated.

Wonder want happened there? Read below...

Very insightful - thanks very much.

So the closure of Groningen kicked them that way. Makes sense, almost a lesson to be learnt for GB in return....if only.

That's interesting - what's going on with our friends in the Netherlands?

Famously like a mini GB in that they found gas (albeit onshore for the Dutch) at just about the same time and both went gas for heating...so striking to be so different considering similar systems.

I know what you mean, but any casual reader just thinks you are a bot who has malfunctioned.

Don't forget the BM is highly geographic as well as temporal. There will be plenty of occasions whereby a very small band of capacity (probably in the South East) hold the key to overall system operation...and they will know it.