Europe's largest LNG plant Hammerfest LNG in Norway. (Source: Equinor)
After hitting $15/MMBtu at the start of the year, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) front-month futures price for natural gas fell off in the second week of January, even after news that the continent’s largest LNG plant will be down for repairs longer than expected.
Prices at Dutch TTF—the European equivalent to Henry Hub—fell to $13.78/MMBtu on Jan. 8. The same day, Equinor announced the company was extending its outage at the Hammerfest LNG plant in Northern Norway to Jan. 19. The company is repairing a failed compressor.
The Hammerfest plant has a capacity to deliver about 6.5 billion cubic meters of gas a year and accounts for about 5% of Norwegian gas exports.
Rystad Energy noted in a published analysis Jan. 9 that the price drop is most likely related to warmer-than-average weather in Europe, but the continued Hammerfest outage may pull more U.S. LNG shipments to Europe.
Even though the year is less than two weeks old, Europe has imported 3.2 million metric tons of LNG, with more than half of the amount coming from the U.S.
“We anticipate that most U.S. LNG cargoes will continue to flow into Europe, as arbitrage economics remain more favorable for European delivery compared to Asian delivery,” Rystad said.
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