European natural gas price tops €70 for first time since January 2023

JUST IN: European natural gas price tops €70 per megawatt-hour for the first time since January 2023, as renewed US-Iran fighting drives energy prices higher and stokes fears of LNG export delays from the Persian Gulf.

European gas just topped seventy euros a megawatt hour, the first time since January 2023.

That's the Dutch benchmark, the price the whole continent watches, and it climbed as the US and Iran traded fire again. The fear this time isn't Russian pipelines, it's ships. A huge share of Europe's gas now arrives by sea as LNG, and the cargo from Qatar has one way out, through the Strait of Hormuz, right past the shooting. These tankers are floating question marks now, and traders price question marks fast. You can see the kind of kit this whole system leans on here, and none of it works without calm shipping lanes.

The timing hurts. This is exactly when Europe fills storage for winter, so every euro on today's price lands on somebody's heating bill in February.

Europe spent three years escaping one energy crisis. It may have just booked a ticket to the next one.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.