Energy Market Update - April 2025

March Recap

Overall, March turned out to be a relatively stable month price-wise. Although gas outperformed wind by 1.1TWh, overall power demand was down by around the same amount from February.

Positive steps were seemingly made towards peace in the Ukraine with the commencement of peace talks. However, nothing solid materialised in the talks between Russia and the US, with Ukraine only present in later sessions.

Gas storage was still somewhat of a concern with the UK struggling to inject. Temperatures picked up throughout the month and the nation was relatively warm compared to seasonal averages. With the close of Q1 it was announced the EU imported record-high levels of LNG. The fuel, however, was in good supply and the news should come as little shock with the curtailment of Russian gas and the EU listing LNG as a “replacement” for Russian gas.

April

At the time of writing, gas again outperformed wind in the generation stakes 26% to 24% respectively. Despite temperatures picking up towards months end, storage injections remain scant providing some worries for the markets. Gas storage remained in the news during the month as the EU continued to hash out its new storage targets. 90% full between October 1^st and December 1^st was confirmed as well as a 10% tolerance should nations miss target. There was some talk about further amendments to this that remain to be seen.

Norway’s first round of annual gas maintenance kicked off, although some of the outages were pushed back to May. It is worth noting that the larger volumes do go offline during May, and April’s schedule was relatively light touch. With the end of the Winter 24 season, a sharp price drop was observed particularly for short terms months and Winter 25.

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping announced several new waves of tariffs throughout the month which, on the whole, helped bring prices down but it remains to be seen how the long-term effects will be handled by markets. Trump also met with President Zelensky of Ukraine indicating potential movement towards peace in the war-torn nation. A day later, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between 8-11 May to coincide with Easter Holidays.

In a busy month for the US , a new LNG facility in the US began commercial operations marking the 3^rd new plant in the last 6 months to come online. Calcasieu Pass, based in the Gulf of Mexico, will likely send LNG to Europe as well as Asia through the relatively near-by Panama Canal. Although a large power outage in Spain and Portugal raised some eyebrows towards the end of the month, prices did not appear to be affected.