European gas hits its highest since 2022 as storage peaks early

The TTF front-month contract, the futures price for the nearest delivery month, rose 3% at Friday's Amsterdam open to €92.30/MWh, according to an OilPrice report published on Investing.com on 23 October. That is equivalent to more than 30 dollars per million BTU, a level not seen since December 2022. The contract had also closed above €90 the previous day after a 3% gain. EnergyRiskIQ's daily table shows a 23 October close of €93.18 and a seven-day gain of 7.2%. That series could not be verified, because the table also records closes on weekend days.

Storage is the constraint pushing prices higher. Gas Infrastructure Europe data put EU storage at 74.62% on 22 October, which TokenPost gave as 845.05 TWh. Estimates of the seasonal norm vary by source: OilPrice cites a five-year average of about 86%, while EnergyRiskIQ puts the seasonal norm at 92.0%. In a 23 October note, ING's Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote that inventories appear to have peaked just below 75%. That would leave the EU about 5 points short even of its 1 November target, which it had already relaxed from 90% to 80%.

The supply gap has come from the Gulf since 2 March, when QatarEnergy halted LNG output after attacks on its Ras Laffan and Mesaieed facilities. Qatar exported 110 billion cubic metres of LNG in 2025, of which 105 billion passed through the Strait of Hormuz, and less than 10% of that volume went to Europe. Europe's direct share is small, but the shortfall in the 105 billion cubic metres bound for Asia intensifies competition for Atlantic cargoes. ING expects Gulf LNG flows to be largely absent from the market for at least most of the 2026–27 winter.