Gunvor warns of ‘broken’ gas market

The European TTF benchmark is creaking under the strain of exceptional circumstances

“I never thought that somebody could say, ‘gas has fallen below €100/MWh [$110/MWh], that is really cheap,’” Torbjorn Tornqvist, CEO of Swiss-headquartered commodity trader Gunvor, told the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit on Tuesday. And he takes that as evidence that the global traded gas market is “broken”. “The problem is a dysfunctional TTF price,” Tornqvist continues. “If you want to put a hedge on TTF now at a price of €96/MWh, the initial margin is €80—that tells you, you just cannot do that. If you are buying it, it is probably OK. But if you are selling it, the upside is actually higher than the value of the contract.” TTF is “just too small a benchmark”, the Gunvor chief