Last year was full of challenges caused by oversupply and a sharp drop in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The restrictions caused by COVID-19 have led to a global halt in most industries, leading to a surplus of natural gas in 2020. In addition, natural gas demand was affected by milder than normal air temperatures, strong production of renewable sources of energy (wind), resulting in gas consumption decrease of 7% during the first 5 months of the year. For all these reasons natural gas prices have reached record lows that have not been observed for more than a decade in all major consumption regions. 2020 June The TTF index was only 5.02 EUR / MWh, compared to 13.38 EUR / MWh a year ago.
Prices started to rise slightly at the end of the summer 2020 as a large number of LNG cargoes were canceled due to a lack of demand, and the demand for natural gas increased due to the easing of restrictions and the recovery of the industry. Later, lower gas deliveries from Russia also contributed to the recovery of the price level, and the price jumped to 11 EUR / MWh, reaching the level of 14 EUR / MWh in the last quarter of 2020.