TTF front-month gas reached roughly EUR 63.50/MWh on Friday 24 July, its highest print since January 2023, then broke about 8 per cent to EUR 58.40 by Monday 27 July as the US halt on strikes against Iran held. 1 2 These are quotes carried by data aggregators on the ICE-settled front-month contract, not exchange settlement figures; the distinction matters in a week when secondary sources diverged by several euros. TTF is the Dutch virtual trading point that prices most of Europe's traded gas.
TTF had already come back above EUR 50 on 13 July and then pushed to EUR 55 on a Hormuz cargo toll before this run to the top of the range. Nothing physical changed in either direction. No European cargo failed to arrive, no pipeline shut, no terminal went offline. The whole excursion was the market buying and then selling insurance against a Gulf interruption that never touched a European molecule.
Eight per cent is a small give-back for a benchmark that had run to a three-and-a-half-year high, and the smallness is informative. A premium that unwinds only partly is a premium the market has not finished holding. Iran's retaliation has stopped rather than been renounced, and the option value of a Gulf disruption does not fall to zero on a pause. For the German fleet, though, this leg stopped mattering three days ago: gas at EUR 58 buys nothing when the revenue leg is falling twice as fast.
