In January, winter gas prices rose to around 52 pence per therm, levels not seen since 2015 due to a number of factors.

An outage at Britain largest gas storage site Rough reduced levels of gas inventories significantly.

UK winter 2018 prices are trading at around 46 pence per therm but are unlikely to reach the winter 2017 contract's peak in January unless there is a very cold winter.

Deliveries of LNG were quite sparse last winter.

Analysts expect around 20 million t of new LNG supply to come online this year, some of which could come to Europe.