Commodities: The European Gas Manual - Chartbook

Research evidence excerpt

Commodities: The European Gas Manual - Chartbook

Bottom-line

Gas market risk still skewed to the upside over winter as low inventory levels leave

Europe in fragile position Bottom line: • TTF broke €60/MWh and hit YTD highs in July, as a re-escalation of the conflict in the Middle

East has caused QatarEnergy to hit pause on their Ras Laffan ramp up process. The prospect of

Qatari exports resuming as normal before the northern hemisphere winter arrives has now

become slim. This means a late summer acceleration of LNG purchases by Europe will have to

be done in a tight market, likely pushing up global gas prices.

• Significant upside risk has now shifted to the winter contracts, as low inventory levels reduce

Europe’s buffer against a normal-cold winter. TTF will need to price higher for Europe to secure

more LNG over winter, closing its discount to JKM. Potential catalysts for significant price spikes

on cold weather forecasts, Russian LNG phaseout. We forecast €60/MWh for 3Q26 and

€65/MWh for 4Q26.

Key points:

• Europe has absorbed most of the LNG supply shock from the loss of Qatari gas over summer, with

LNG imports into our perimeter falling 35% YoY in July. Hot weather across Asia has kept LNG

imports strong across the region, widening the JKM-TTF basis and pulling spot cargos away from

Europe.

• Lower LNG imports into Europe have prevented further tightening of the global gas market over

summer but comes at the expense of European storage refill. Storage is only 55% full at end-July, a

full 20pp below the seasonal average. Meanwhile, a flat forward curve into winter 2026 continues to

provide limited incentive for commercial players to inject gas into storage in August.

• We no longer see Europe attracting sufficient LNG to reach 75% storage fill pre-winter, now