Dutch and British natural gas prices were largely steady on Wednesday morning, as a few shipments have been flagged to pass via the Strait of Hormuz and the upcoming highly anticipated visit by President Donald Trump to China.
Benchmark Dutch front-month contract at the TTF hub was up €0.06 at €46.75 per megawatt hour (MWh) by 08:13 GMT, data from the Intercontinental Exchange showed.
The British contract for June eased by 0.10p to 114.70p per therm. The market is waiting for more visibility regarding the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East, and attention has also turned to the US-China summit between Trump and President Xi Jinping, analysts at Engie Energyscan said in the daily gas report.
It will be the first visit by a US president to China in nearly a decade, against the backdrop of the Iran war and trade tensions.
Meanwhile, there is fresh hope that more liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes may start emerging from the Persian Gulf, said Daniel Hynes, senior commodities strategist at ANZ, in a note.
Two tankers loaded with Qatari LNG headed to Pakistan have cleared the strait in recent days as part of a bilateral deal between Iran and Pakistan.
However, buyers remain concerned about the availability of supply, with an increasing number entering the spot market for the first time in a while, Hynes added.
In Europe, gas storage sites were last 35.6 per cent full, compared with around 42.8 per cent at the same time last year and also trailing levels seen during the previous energy crisis in 2022, Gas Infrastructure Europe data showed.
Higher summer prices versus where next winter is currently trading are limiting incentives to store gas, raising doubts over the resilience of European natural gas supply during the heating season 2026/27.
(Reporting by Nora Buli; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)