TTF front-month settled €47.69/MWh on Friday 22 May, down 5% from the €50.17 close on Monday 18 May that took the contract above €50 for the first time since early April1. Iran returned a Pakistan-mediated response to the US ceasefire proposal on the same Monday and Donald Trump rejected it as "totally unacceptable", calling the ceasefire "on massive life support"2. The retrace returned TTF towards the €47.23 print on Tuesday 12 May and the €43-47/MWh band that held through Project Freedom.
EU storage stayed inside its 0.17 pp/day commercial vacuum, the Bruegel model was unrevised at the post-break price, and the Bundesnetzagentur held its supply-stable language unchanged. Pakistan's back-channel role through army chief Asim Munir has been the primary US-Iran conduit since early May, and Tehran's reply walked past the 14-point MOU Washington had routed through Islamabad on 7 May. NBP traded 126 p/therm on Wednesday 20 May, approximately €45.3/MWh at prevailing EUR/GBP, leaving the TTF-NBP basis at EUR +3.9/MWh; BBL capacity halved to 22 mcm/d from October 2026 caps the physical convergence between the two hubs, so basis trades inside a balance-sheet constraint rather than an arbitrage that closes itself.
Physical supply did none of the work: 14 loaded LNG cargoes were still waiting on Hormuz, Hammerfest LNG was 49 days into its 79-day outage, and the Trading Economics print of €47.69 sits inside the band TTF held for five sessions of physical supply unchanged. €50 holds as a technical ceiling for desks short the strike; a Hormuz signal breaks it from above and a breakdown in the Pakistan-mediated channel tests €45 support from below.
