Natural Gas soared more than 7% in Tuesday’s trading as investors reacted to news that over 7.2 million cubic feet of natural gas escaped in a leak at a key Alaskan oilfield at the end of last month.
ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), the operator of the gas rigs extracting gas from its Alpine Field, along with the state regulatory agency, confirmed the scale of the leak. Production was cut and workers were forced to evacuate the plant.
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission confirmed the leak and that in total, the daily Alpine production dropped to a low of 36,851 barrels on March 13 from 51,700 on March 1 before the discovery. However, the latest figures show that output from the field has since recovered to over 50,000 barrels a day.
Germany Takes Action
Moving the commodity markets was the big news that Germany, the economic powerhouse of the EU project, has seized control of a Germany-based unit of Russian energy giant Gazprom.
The surprise move came after the German ministry of economic affairs learned that Gazprom Germania had been acquired by JSC Palmary and Gazprom export business services LLC. However, it wasn’t clear who the owners behind the two companies were, per the statement.
German economy minister Robert Habeck said in a statement this week:
“The Federal Government is doing what is necessary to uphold security of supply in Germany,”
“This also includes not exposing energy infrastructures in Germany to arbitrary decisions by the Kremlin. The proper conduct of business in Germany must be ensured.”
The EU has put forward plans to slash dependency on Russian gas imports by two-thirds before the end of the year and to fully decouple from Russian imports by 2030 at the latest.
