European Gas Logs 12% Weekly Gain as EIA Cuts US Winter Forecast to $2.87
European wholesale gas prices locked in a 12% weekly gain on Friday as US and Iran back-channel talks collapsed.
The Dutch Title Transfer Facility front-month contract rose 4.2% to 96.18 euros per megawatt-hour, while the British National Balancing Point contract climbed 3.8% to 239 pence per therm.
President Donald Trump said on Truth Social Thursday that the US no longer needed a deal with Tehran, and told Vice President JD Vance to drop negotiations.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said Friday it hit a US early warning radar in Bahrain, a claim US Central Command denied, saying it shot down two attack drones with no casualties or damage.
European gas has pulled away from crude's slump. Oil was headed for a second straight weekly loss on near-term oversupply.
Storage at 71% stopped being enough comfort
EU gas storage sits 71% full, a level that utility buyers and hedging desks no longer treat as sufficient insurance against a worst case.
Traders are pricing a geopolitical risk premium back into forward winter contracts, fearing a wider regional war could choke liquefied natural gas transit routes as the heating season starts.
Tehran has kept trying to control the Strait of Hormuz and has attacked ships it considers unauthorized users, while the US Navy enforces its own blockade of Iranian vessels.
The American bill is heading the other way
The US Energy Information Administration cut its winter gas price forecast on Nov. 10, projecting the Henry Hub spot price will average $2.87 per million British thermal units from November through March, 16% below the October outlook.
US production is running roughly 4.5% above last year's pace, and LNG exports are up more than 18% year over year through October.
The agency expects almost 70B cubic feet more gas in storage at the end of November than it forecast a month earlier, after a warm start to the month.
US LNG gross exports are forecast to rise from about 15B cubic feet per day in 2025 to about 19B cubic feet per day in 2027 as new capacity comes online.
Domestic traders are caught between the two stories. December gas settled Tuesday at $3.2960 per million British thermal units, a four-week high, helped by the first cold shot of the season and record LNG feedgas near 20.3B cubic feet per day.
Cheniere Energy posted third-quarter revenues of $6.17B, up 39% from a year earlier, and shipped 188 cargoes against 163 in the same quarter of 2025.
The largest US LNG exporter raised full-year adjusted earnings guidance to a range of $8.75B to $9.25B and lifted its quarterly dividend by more than 12%.
American households get a cheaper winter while European ones absorb the geopolitical premium on every therm.
