Natural gas price falls to €72 per MWh

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) regasification terminal vessel Examplar in Inkoo port.
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) regasification terminal vessel Examplar in Inkoo port. Source: Yle

The price of natural gas on the Netherlands-based Title Transfer Facility (TTF) has fallen further, to €72 per Megawatt hour.

Estonia's natural gas prices are based on the TTF price, though on a month-ahead basis, meaning this fall will not translate to lower prices in Estonia until February at the earliest.

Monday's TTF trading opened at €70.3 per MWh, rising after that to €72 per MWh as of 10.30 a.m.

This is the latest in a continued trend for a fall in price in gas futures on the TTF, particularly since mid-December, when the price was €130 per MWh, and after a high of €300 per MWh in late summer.

The current price is the lowest since the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February, and has put paid to fears of further soaring prices over heating season (October to March) or of a shortage in natural gas during that time, in Europe as a whole.

The current figure is also below the rate at which state support applies.

The state will pay 80 percent of that component of a domestic gas bill which exceeds €80 per MWh in price, capped at a maximum consumption rate based on the average household (homes can consume more gas than the cap, simply that support will not be paid beyond that level) through to the end of March.

While January's bills will still see that support apply, from February, market leader Eesti Gaas has said natural gas bills will be down 30 percent to €1.25 per cubic meter, from February.

The need to decouple from Russian gas imports has led to a reliance on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), imported from countries such as the U.S., Argentina and Norway.

Estonia now has a functioning LNG terminal, and can obtain LNG from the Klaipeda terminal in Lithuania, and from the new Inkoo terminal in Finland, to which it is linked via the Balticconnector pipeline. Gas reserves are also stored in Latvia at an underground facility.

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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Barbara Oja

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