European gas futures broke above €100 per megawatt-hour on Oct. 28 as disrupted LNG shipments, storage below its nine-year average and production cuts at fertilizer plants pointed to pressure on winter supply and industrial demand.
The November 2026 contract on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) was quoted at €100.425/MWh at 11:03 a.m. ET (15:03 UTC) on Oct. 28, according to Intercontinental Exchange data cited by S&P Global. Reuters reported that ICE data showed the front-month contract briefly reaching €100/MWh at about 9:35 a.m. ET (13:35 UTC). S&P Global said its Platts month-ahead assessment last exceeded €100/MWh on Dec. 20, 2022, a separate measure from the November futures contract.
EU gas storage totaled 849.11 terawatt-hours, or 74.96% full, at midnight ET (04:00 UTC) on Oct. 29, Gas Infrastructure Europe data showed. The European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) said storage was below its nine-year average on Oct. 21, after stocks ended the 2025-26 winter at 28% of capacity.
ACER said no significant volumes of Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) reached the EU during summer 2026. EU LNG imports fell 14% from summer 2025, while U.S. LNG accounted for around 30% of the bloc’s total gas supply. Edison said QatarEnergy notified it that three more cargoes scheduled for Italy’s Adriatic LNG terminal would not arrive, extending force majeure on its deliveries through the end of December 2026. Edison said 38 cargoes were affected, representing about five billion cubic meters of gas, and that it had replaced 27 cargoes, or about 2.7 billion cubic meters, by Oct. 27.
High prices have also curtailed industrial production. Yara said it cut 150,000 metric tons of ammonia and 115,000 metric tons of finished products in the third quarter of 2026, mainly at its Ferrara plant in Italy. ACER estimated that Middle East conflict-related disruption added €18 billion to €33 billion to Europe’s gas import bill in summer 2026 for the same quantity of gas. It said those costs affect households, industrial consumers and electricity prices.
Warren Patterson, ING’s head of commodities strategy, said, “The key question is whether these higher prices will destroy demand.” ING’s Oct. 29 note cited Norwegian outages and forecasts for colder-than-usual weather in Northwest Europe from the following week as risks to supply and storage.
