Energy prices: the price of gas at its lowest since February 22, before the start of the war in Ukraine, how to explain it?

Gas prices continue to fall in Europe.

On the Dutch futures market, a reference for the continent, the TTF for January delivery closed on Friday at 82 euros per megawatt hour, a low that had not been reached since February 22, i.e. before the invasion of Ukraine. .

In August, the price of a MWh for January exceeded 345 euros.

How can this drop be explained?

The law of supply and demand played on several levels:

• Apart from a very brief cold spell, temperatures remained mild over most of the European continent, so it took less gas to heat up than expected.
• Incentives to consume less have borne fruit: in Belgium, consumption has been reduced by 17% since August 2022 compared to the average of the previous 5 years. In France too, a significant drop was recorded, as in all of Europe.
• L’Europe a su diversify your sources of supplyby turning to liquefied gas suppliers, such as the United States, Azerbaijan… and Qatar: deliveries of Qatari LNG to Zeebrugge have almost doubled in one year.