European gas prices have soared by as much as 50% in just one week. The surge in prices was spurred by reduced Russian flows and an outage at a key LNG export terminal. Germany warned that limits to flows via the Nord Stream pipeline were a strategy from Putin to rattle the market. Just as a lull was settling on the European gas market after the winter and the rubles-for-Russian-gas dramas ended, Moscow this week limited natural gas flows to its two biggest customers in Europe, Germany and Italy. Combined with the prolonged outage at a U.S. LNG export facility that met 2.5% of Europe’s gas demand in May, the Russian cut to flows sent European natural gas prices soaring as the threat to the security of supply returned. Europe’s natural gas prices jumped by as much as 50% in just one week, settling on Wednesday at their highest […]