By Benedict De Meulemeester on 15/03/2011
German Cal 12 power ended above 58 euro per MWh today. The disastrous events in Japan have sent ripples across the worldwide energy markets. A brief résumé of the consequences of the earthquake that we currently observe:
The energy markets have changed completely in less than two months time. Revolution and war in the Middle east and an earthquake in Japan have severely shaken the supply / demand balance. The short term price movements might just be speculation or panic reactions. They could also be the start of a further bull trend. But then the question is: can the recovering economy stand this combination of: 1. Commodity price inflation, 2. Severe disruption of one of the world’s most important economies, 3. A massive switch of insurance money towards the Japanese reconstruction? Is the current crash of stock exchanges the precursor of a new economic crisis looming? Or is it just a panic reaction?
No better illustration of the unpredictable character of energy markets than the past two months. Keep counting on that lack of predictability and spread your buying decisions is the best that we can advise in such circumstances. We have to watch carefully in the next days whether the spot gas prices continue to rise. Because that would clearly indicate that increased Japanese LNG buying is affecting supply to Europe.
For the longer term, it is clear that the Japanese disaster will affect the nuclear power sector. It was the Tsjernobyl disaster in 1986 that inspired European governments to decide to phase out nuclear power production. The 25 years that followed without nuclear incidents inspired those governments to turn back those plans of shutting down nuclear power plants. But what politician will dare to defend expanded lifetimes for nuclear power plants after what has happened in Japan? Let alone decide whether to build a new nuclear power plant. If the nuclear phase-out plans would be resumed, this would inevitably have consequences for power pricing in Europe. But that’s the longer term. No idea what it will bring, as every morning we get up in surprise over a new explosion or fire in the Japanese nuclear power plant.
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