TTF Hits EUR 92.30 Per MWh, Highest Since December 2022, as EU Gas Storage Stalls at 74.62% With Qatari LNG Restricted

The front-month Dutch TTF contract rose about 3% at Friday's open in Amsterdam to EUR 92.30 per megawatt-hour, or $103.40, its highest since December 2022, according to Oilprice.com. That converts to $30.30 per MMBtu by our calculation. The Middle East escalation continues to restrict Qatari LNG flows, and Brent futures reached $114.00 per barrel at 12:33 AM CDT Friday, per Oilprice.com.

Storage Stalls Just Under 75%

EU storage was 74.62% full on October 22, more than 10 percentage points below the five-year average of about 86%, per ING strategists cited by Oilprice.com. ING said storage appears to have peaked just under 75%. Some EU countries have started drawing on gas as temperatures drop.

Our October 18 report put storage at 74.10% on October 16 and TTF at EUR 86 to EUR 88 per MWh. Storage has gained just 0.52 percentage points in six days, while the front-month is up between 4.9% and 7.3% from that range. Supply is unchanged in direction, but the cushion is thinner and the price signal is louder.

What a $27 Spread Means Per Bcf

Henry Hub's November contract fell to $3.10 per MMBtu on October 16, per Global LNG Hub. Against TTF at $30.30, the gross gap is $27.20 per MMBtu. Across one billion cubic feet, which holds roughly 1.04 million MMBtu, that is about $28 million of gross margin before liquefaction, shipping and regasification costs.

That arithmetic shows why European buyers must bid hard to attract US cargoes. It is an Oil Authority calculation using mixed dates, so treat it as an order of magnitude. US inventories were 3,567 Bcf as of October 9, about 1.3% above the five-year average, per the same report.

Asia Competes for the Same Cargoes

JKM, the Asian spot LNG benchmark, rose to the high-$29s per MMBtu on October 16 for December delivery, per Global LNG Hub. TTF for November delivery stood at $28.9 that day, so Asia carried a premium of under $1. Investing.com reported on October 20 that TTF traded at EUR 90.10 per MWh at 11:21 GMT, up EUR 2.06, as global competition with Asia for supplies intensified.

Japan's LNG stocks for power generation stood at 2.64 million tonnes on October 11, up 0.07 million tonnes, per METI data cited by Global LNG Hub. South Korea and Thailand have also bought spot cargoes. Norwegian supply constraints, including outages at Kårstø noted in our earlier report, have trimmed pipeline gas to Western Europe as well.

Forecasters Disagree on the Winter

ING said European gas stays highly sensitive to Persian Gulf developments, and that LNG flows could be largely absent for much of the Northern Hemisphere winter. Citi's fourth-quarter base case of EUR 56, cited in our October 18 report, now sits EUR 36.30 below the front-month. Global Risk Management's EUR 100 scenario sits EUR 7.70 above it.

We have not confirmed whether Citi has updated its call since then. If ING is right about absent Qatari volumes, the lower forecast looks stale and storage draws become the key variable. Any Gulf de-escalation would reverse the logic quickly, since Qatar's capacity is the swing supply.