Some supply tightness caused Thursday's gains to be extended Friday on the UK's NBP trading hub, providing a further break for what has been largely a bearish market.
At 11:00 am London time, the within-day contract was valued at 47.80 pence/therm, up by 0.40 p/th Thursday, and the day-ahead contract rose by 0.95 p/th at 47.70 p/th.
Earlier in the week the day-ahead contract traded as low as 45.15 p/th.
"The prompt is up a touch on a shorter system but that won't hang around," a gas broker in London said.
National Grid, the system operator, showed demand almost identical to the seasonal norm during the morning at 206 million cubic meters while supplies were falling short at 196 million cu m.
"[Dutch] BBL flows are still low," the broker said. "That could be due to a contractual thing or maybe a factor of price." The BBL flows were at rates of 9 million cu m/day during the morning compared with an average of just over 20 million cu m/d throughout the last month
LNG sedout for Friday was nominated at 48 million cu m, all expected to come from South Hook.
Upcoming LNG tanker deliveries to the UK include the Rasheeda to South Hook May 10 and the Mozah May 14.
Norway's Langeled line was sending gas into the UK at rates of 22 million cu m/d. There remains a 30 million cu m/d field maintenance under way offshore Norway until May 30, according to Norwegian export operator Gassco.
The UK-Belgium Interconnector is nominated to flow a net 19 million cu m of gas to the Continent.
On Thursday night there was flow from the Aldbrough, Hornsea and Holford storage facilities to balance the system at the end of the day. But net injections are expected into storage Friday, of 9 million cu m.
UK storage is overall 65% full with stocks of 3.1 billion cu m.
At the same time last year it was only 21% full.
On the forward curve Winter 14 traded at 62.50 p/th, up 0.55 p/th from the previous day's close.
