Gas prices rebound as US-Iran diplomacy efforts stutter
XLE•Carbon market update
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract CFI2Zc1 was up €0.26 at €86.27 per metric ton.
(Reporting by Nora Buli; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)
US-Iran tensions and market sentiment
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned what he called "signs of a bullying mentality" from US President Donald Trump, who earlier threatened to "annihilate" Iran.
The two countries remain far apart on how to end their war, but diplomacy must continue, a senior Iranian official told Reuters.
"So far, the UN summit has not offered any obvious breakthrough regarding the US-Iran crisis, and the market rebounds this morning as optimism about any noteworthy outcome of the summit is fading," analysts at Mind Energy said in a morning report.
"Overall, the market seems to be returning to a wait-and-see position, torn between hopes for a settlement of the US-Iran conflict and a persistently tight European gas balance," analysts at Engie EnergyScan said.
Norwegian maintenance and storage levels
Meanwhile, Norwegian maintenance has not seen the expected uplift to natural gas flows to Europe amid extensions of outages at the Aasgard and Troll fields, LSEG analyst Ulrich Weber said.
"So far the extensions are incremental such that major impact on prices is unlikely," he added.
Norwegian gas export bookings dropped to 224.9 million cubic metres (mcm) per day on Thursday, down from 226.9 mcm/day on Wednesday, but are set to largely normalise by the end of the month, data from infrastructure operator Gassco showed.
European gas storage last stood at 70.24% full, up 0.10 percentage points day-on-day but still 11.7 percentage points lower year-on-year, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe.
