Atlantic spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) freight rates continued to increase this week, while European prices decreased compared to the previous week.
Last week, freight rates increased with the Atlantic rate reaching $52,500 per day.
“Atlantic freight rates have experienced a third consecutive week of significant rate increases, with the Spark30 Atlantic rate increasing by $4,500 to $57,000 per day, and the Spark25 Pacific rate staying steady at $45,250 per day,” Qasim Afghan,” Spark’s commercial analyst told LNG Prime on Friday.
“The last three weeks have seen the largest week-on-week Spark30 freight rate increases of the year thus far,” he said.
European prices dip
In Europe, the SparkNWE DES LNG front month dropped compared to the last week.
“SparkNWE DES LNG prices experienced some volatility this week, with the front month price assessed for July delivery rising to a year-to-date high of $11.323/MMBtu on Monday before falling to its current assessment of $10.575/MMBtu, and the discount to the TTF assessed at $0.165/MMBtu,” Afghan said.
He said this is a $0.451/MMBtu week-on-week decrease in DES LNG price, the largest week-on-week decrease in six weeks.
European prices rose earlier this week after an unplanned outage at Norway’s Nyhamna gas processing plant.
Gassco said that the plant, which has a capacity of 79.8 mcm per day, is expected to ramp up capacity to 45mcm/day on Friday.
Data by Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) shows that volumes in gas storages in the EU continued to rise and storages were 70.86 percent full on June 5.
Gas storages were 69.48 percent full on May 29, and 70.54 percent full on June 5 last year.
JKM remains at around $12/MMBtu
In Asia, JKM, the price for LNG cargoes delivered to Northeast Asia, for July settled at $11.985/MMBtu on Thursday.
Last week, JKM for July settled at 11.906/MMBtu on Friday. It rose to 12.050/MMBtu on Monday this week and dropped slightly to 11.990/MMBtu on Tuesday and 11.970/MMBtu on Wednesday.
State-run Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) said in a report earlier this week that JKM continued its upward trend last week due to increased demand in Asia for the summer season and increased electricity demand due to the heatwave in India, as well as continued supply uncertainties such as troubles at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG plant in Australia.
Chevron Australia resumed full LNG production from the Gorgon facility on May 29. After that, there was a temporary outage at the facility and Chevron resumed full production on June 3.
US LNG exports reached 26 shipments in the week ending June 5, the same as in the week before, and pipeline deliveries to US terminals increased compared to the week before, according to the Energy Information Administration.
As per spot LNG cargo tenders, Komipo is seeking 3.2-3.8 trillion British thermal units (TBtu) of LNG on a delivered ex-ship (DES) basis.
The delivery window is August 7-9 and the volumes will be delivered to a Kogas-operated LNG import terminal in South Korea, according to Komipo.
Power producer First Gen is also seeking one spot LNG cargo for delivery in July to its FSRU-based import terminal in Batangas, Philippines.
Egypt is reportedly seeking cargoes to meet electricity needs during the summer months.
Norwegian FSRU player Hoegh LNG recently confirmed it has signed a deal with Australian Industrial Energy (AIE) and Egypt’s EGAS to deploy the 2019-built FSRU Hoegh Galleon to Egypt.
The agreement with EGAS is for an interim period of June 2024 to February 2026.
Hoegh Galleon was on Friday located at the Sagunto LNG import terminal in Spain, its AIS data shows.