U.K. Natural Gas Rises on Forecast Shortfall; Electricity Slips

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. natural gas for today rose as National Grid Plc forecast a shortfall of the fuel in Europe’s biggest user. Day-ahead power slipped.

National Grid, the manager of Britain’s energy network, forecast pipelines in the country will contain 318 million cubic meters of gas at 6 a.m. London time tomorrow, 25 million less than at the start of today. Gas demand was predicted to reach 290 million cubic meters in the 24 hours through to that time. That’s 7 million more than normal for the time of year.

Gas for within-day delivery gained 2.3 pence, or 4.5 percent, to 53.8 pence a therm as of 10 a.m. in London according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s equal to $8.86 a million British thermal units. A therm is 100,000 Btu.

Gas for next month was unchanged at 55.9 pence. About half of Britain’s electricity can come from natural gas-fed power stations so the fuel’s price can affect power.

Baseload power for tomorrow fell 20 pence to 50.30 pounds a megawatt-hour, broker data show. Nuclear supplies were curbed as Electricite de France SA halted a reactor at its Hartlepool site as part of a planned statutory outage and shut a unit at its Heysham 1 plant unexpectedly.

Britain can boost output from its coal and gas-fueled power stations to compensate for reduced nuclear generation. Electricity generation from natural gas rose about 5.6 percent compared with the same time yesterday, grid data show.

Power for next month rose 10 pence to 50.85 pounds a megawatt-hour, Baseload is delivered around the clock. Bloomberg compiles prices from brokers including ICAP Plc, GFI Group Inc. and Spectron Group Ltd.

(Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-04/u-k-natural-gas-rises-on-forecast-shortfall-electricity-slips.html)