Irish wholesale gas prices up 6% in November but down on year

Irish wholesale gas prices rose 6 per cent in November, but remain 20 per cent lower year-on-year, according to this month's Vayu Wholesale Energy Market Report. The upwards nudge in prices is the result of seasonal increase in consumer heating demand and a number of supply disruptions in Norwegian gas fields.

Over the course of the year, suppressed demand due to warmer than usual weather conditions has been a major driver of lower wholesale gas prices.

Combined with a surplus of shipments of liquefied natural gas and weak demand in Asia, this has resulted in high levels of energy storage across Europe.

Prices for next-day gas delivery finished trading on Friday at 56.1 pence, down 15 per cent since the start of the year, with the weakness also feeding into lower gas pricing for December and the first quarter of 2015.

Gillian Lawler, a senior energy analyst at Vayu, said that it would take "a significant event", such as an escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, to drive up wholesale gas prices for a prolonged period of time.