Then came news of a leak at Europe’s biggest liquefied natural gas plant, located above the Arctic Circle in Norway.
Equinor’s visibility “dramatically changed with reduced flows from Russia,” said Irene Rummelhoff, the company’s head of midstream, marketing and processing. “There was a point in time where almost took us for granted. That is no longer the case.” The notion that gas won’t disappear anytime soon, a view strongly endorsed by the gas industry, has thrust Norway to the center of the conversation around securing Europe’s energy resources. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck—who is also in charge of climate policy in the region’s biggest economy—made an official visit to Oslo in early January 2023.
The response was especially intense, as traders had mostly been betting that prices would slump. Sluggish demand and the fact that the region’s gas inventories would be full by the end of the summer had led them to think that Europe had finally gotten over the worst of the energy crisis. Unusually hot weather on the continent, which normally increases energy use, amplified concern.
What nobody knew back then is that reducing gas flows was part of the run-up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Around November, traders started to account for the loss of Russian supply in their pricing models.