EU gas prices set to fall sharply this winter, says Goldman Sachs

theguardian.com:

European countries can withstand Russia’s gas cuts this winter as supply headaches may have been “successfully solved”, according to analysis by a leading US bank.

Goldman Sachs said the price of gas is expected to more than halve this winter as EU nations’ efforts to avoid big shortages this winter prove effective.

Goldman said on Tuesday it expects EU wholesale natural gas prices to fall from about €215 (£186) a megawatt hour to below €100 a MWh by the end of the first quarter of next year, assuming typical winter weather conditions. That is well below the €213 previously predicted.

European countries have rushed to fill up their gas storage facilities before the winter after Russia’s Gazprom reduced supplies, including through the inportant Nord Stream 1 (NS1) pipeline. The frenzied dash for supplies has pushed up the wholesale price of gas.

Earlier this month Gazprom extended the shutdown of gas flows through the pipeline, providing no timeframe for a reopening.

Goldman Sachs analysts said: “The indefinite reduction in NS1 exports to zero leaves north-west Europe without any Russian gas going forward. And while we often hear the question of what this will do to storage, we believe a better approach is to ask what this will do to prices, so that storage continues to build as needed.

“This is the puzzle Europe has successfully solved for the past year, with a combination of gas demand destruction within Europe and across [liquified natural gas] buyers elsewhere in the world, resulting in above-average inventory builds.”

Goldman’s analysts said they expect storage facilities to be 90% on average full by the end of October, before an EU-wide target of 80% full by 1 November.

Governments are hoping to create a gas buffer in case