Analysts warned that prices, which have risen nearly 400% in the past year due to lower gas flows from Russia, will rise further when markets open on Monday after Moscow scrapped a Saturday deadline to resume flows , saying it had discovered a bug during maintenance. European leaders have accused Russia of rigging energy supplies during the invasion of Ukraine, while Moscow blames Western sanctions and technical issues for supply disruptions. chart The Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea to Germany, supplied about a third of the natural gas exported from Russia to Europe, but was operating at 20% capacity before the flows were halted for maintenance last week. Russian state energy company Gazprom was expected to restart flows at 20% after the latest outage, sending benchmark TTF gas prices in the Netherlands down about 40% from a record high on Aug. 26, closing just above from €200 (£173) per megawatt hour on Friday. Leon Izbicki, an analyst at Energy Aspects, said: “On Friday… the market had already priced in the returning Nord Stream 1 flows. We expect a significantly stronger opening for the TTF on Monday.” Record electricity costs linked to rising gas prices have already forced some energy-intensive industries, including fertilizer and aluminum makers, to cut production and led EU governments to pump billions into programs to help households. The outcome of the latest cut will depend on Europe’s ability to import natural gas from other sources, said Jacob Mandel, senior fellow for commodities at Aurora Energy Research. Subscribe to Business Today Get ready for the business day – we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. “Supply is hard to come by and it’s getting harder and harder to replace every bit of natural gas that doesn’t come from Russia,” he said.
