Dutch and British gas prices fell on Wednesday afternoon after workers at Chevron’s liquefied natural gas facilities in Australia said they had agreed to pause planned strike action for one day.
The Dutch October contract fell by €3.10 to €30.80 per megawatt hour (MWh) by 3.42pm GMT, LSEG Eikon data showed.
Workers on Chevron’s Wheatstone LNG platform have paused their strike action while negotiations continue.
The Dutch day-ahead contract was down €1.40 at €31.40 per MWh.
In the British market, the October contract fell by 5 pence to 77.50 p/therm.
The workers at Chevron’s LNG facilities in Australia would delay strike action until 6am Perth time on Friday, two union representatives, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
Although Australia is not a major supplier of LNG to Europe, British and European gas prices had been buoyed in recent weeks by the possible strike action on fears fewer Australian LNG cargoes going to Asia could lead to more competition for other sources of LNG and drive up costs.
Analysts at Engie’s EnergyScan said news of the strikes was likely to continue to fuel intra-day price volatility in the gas markets.
Chevron said it would continue to work through the bargaining process.
Other factors in the gas market are largely bearish.
Norwegian gas production is expected to rebound significantly next week following an end to outages, and Europe’s gas storage sites are more than 93.3 per cent full, according to latest data from Gas Infrastructure Europe.
In the European carbon market, the benchmark contract fell by €0.29 to €83.56 a tonne.
