Natural gas prices in the European market temporarily rose by more than 10% due to supply concerns

Natural gas prices in the European market temporarily fell due to supply concerns after Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom announced it would suspend natural gas supply through a major pipeline to Germany from the end of this month, increased over 10%.

Gazprom said on the August 19, that it will suspend the supply of natural gas from the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany for three days from the 31^st of this month to the 2^nd day of next month due to the inspection of the equipment on the Russian side.

In response to this, in the European market on august 22, the price of natural gas called “Dutch TTF” temporarily increased by more than 10% from last weekend’s closing price to about 290 euros per MWh.

This is nearly seven times higher than the same period last year.

Nord Stream’s supply of natural gas was halted last month for routine inspections and then resumed but is still at about 20% of its normal capacity, suggesting the market is unlikely to be out of supply for a long period of time.

It is also pointed out that if the price of natural gas continues to rise, it may further accelerate inflation in European countries.

Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20220823/k10013783291000.html