European Gas Prices Drop as Goldman Warns of Bearish Risks

(Bloomberg) -- European natural gas slumped the most in almost six weeks as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned of downside risks, after prices recently surged to the highest this year.

Benchmark futures dropped 4.6% on Wednesday as the November contract expired. They have the potential to nearly halve from current levels if the market receives more Russian gas than expected, according to the bank.

Goldman’s base-case scenario is that Russian fuel flowing through Ukrainian pipelines will cease once a transit deal expires at the end of the year, analyst Samantha Dart said in a note. “Any deviation from the status quo would imply higher Russian supplies vs consensus and, hence, lean bearish global gas prices,” she wrote.

The market experienced a knee jerk reaction in September on news of a potential deal. Prices temporarily dropped as much as 9.1% after a media report about talks to supply Azeri gas through Ukrainian pipelines. An agreement still hasn’t been reached.

With the US election looming, traders also need to consider that prices may fall if Russia gets to supply liquefied natural gas from its currently sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 facility, Dart said. Any of these scenarios could push gas prices down to “the low-to-mid €20s” per megawatt-hour, she added, making them competitive against lignite in power generation.

Europe’s gas market has been volatile in recent weeks, even though the continent’s gas storage sites are 95% full and heating needs have been muted by unusually mild weather. 

Hostilities in the Middle East have eased, adding downside pressure on prices this week, but traders remain on high alert for potential disruptions. Ever-changing weather forecasts have contributed to price volatility. 

A winter similar to the one in 2017 — the coldest of the past 10 winters — could leave Europe’s gas storage facilities only about 20% full by the end of the heating season, BloombergNEF estimates. Another mild winter would deplete only about half of the region’s inventories.

Dutch front-month futures, Europe’s gas benchmark, settled at €40.90 a megawatt-hour, the lowest in more than a week. Prices on Tuesday hit the highest intraday level since December. 

--With assistance from Anna Shiryaevskaya.

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