European natural gas prices rose yesterday, following three days of declines, with the market focused on the risk of supplies from Russia and a major heat wave bearing down on parts of the region.
Dutch front-month futures, the European benchmark, rose 1.4 percent to 159.50 euros per megawatt-hour by 9:14am in Amsterdam.
Gazprom PJSC has declared force majeure on shipments to several European buyers over the past month, people familiar with the matter said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The move might signal that it intends to keep supplies capped, reinforcing Russia’s grip on the region’s energy.
Last month, Russia slashed its exports to Germany via the major Nord Stream link — the main pipeline to the EU —citing delays to gas-turbine maintenance, following Western sanctions against Moscow. One turbine was flown from Canada to Germany on Sunday and could arrive in Russia in about a week, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday.
Some analysts are skeptical the pipeline will immediately return to normal flows after separate, annual maintenance is completed this week.
Photo: Reuters
“Now that Germany and Canada found an arrangement around the sanctions to bring back the turbine that powers Nord Stream 1 pipeline, it will be interesting to see what other reason Gazprom uses to justify force majeure,” said Leslie Palti-Guzman, chief executive officer of New York-based consultancy Gas Vista LLC.
Meanwhile, extreme heat continues to bear down on western Europe. Temperatures in parts of the UK, including London, were forecast to reach an all-time high yesterday. Paris and Amsterdam were expected to peak at levels just shy of records, forecaster Maxar said.
A halt of Russian gas supplies to the EU could potentially reduce its GDP by as much as 1.5 percent if the next winter is cold and the region fails to take preventive measures to save energy, new estimates by the European Commission show.
The European Commission is set to warn that, in the event of an average winter, a cut-off of gas shipments from Moscow would reduce GDP by between 0.6 percent and 1 percent, a draft EU document seen by Bloomberg News says.
It is also planning a set of recommendations to member states — including reductions to heating and cooling use and some market-based measures — to offset the impact of a possible full disruption by Russia, its biggest source of imports.
That measure would be voluntary, and governments would be told to report back in September with specific steps. The commission would also give itself the right to force consumption cuts if needed later on.
“An EU coordinated response before the winter and in solidarity between member states would limit the negative impact on GDP and jobs of a possible major disruption,” the commission said in the draft document, titled “Save gas for a safe winter.”
Taking early action to reduce demand in the case of an average winter could limit the negative impact of a supply cut-off on GDP to 0.4 percent, it estimates.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained