Honest reflections on Energy Flux in 2024
PLUS: The ‘wild card’ for TTF in 2025
This time last year, I relaunched Energy Flux with a singular mission: to analyse global natural gas markets through the lens of Europe’s net-zero journey.
Initially, I was nervous about whether the narrow editorial remit would unduly constrain the variety of stories and become repetitious.
I soon discovered I was peering down a vast network of rabbit holes. Since natural gas prices impinge (directly or indirectly) on the economics of all major energy demand segments, the breadth of possible coverage is immense.
The only limiting factor is my own sense of curiosity. By questioning everything and digging deep into the data for answers, Energy Flux has expanded in ways I would never have imagined possible had I not adopted a laser-like focus on this niche.
Since the relaunch, the newsletter has published more than 50 longform articles on everything ranging from plunging LNG freight rates, canal outages, data centres and capture rates to fraught energy geopolitics in the South Caucasus, Antarctica and the Middle East.
🚀 The readership has grown strongly too. Total readers increased by 65% to ~6,000, with paid subscriptions quadrupling (thanks to a flurry of corporate group subscriptions). The Energy Flux website now generates ~30k page views per month. It fills me with gratitude and a sense of purpose to be reaching an audience of this size and professional calibre. However you subscribe, thank you for being here.
Before being swept away by the inevitable market madness of 2025, I took a moment to reflect on the most-read articles of 2024. I’ve listed the top 10 posts below in ascending order of total page views, with some honest thoughts about each (and a few mea culpas along the way).
🃏 TTF ‘wild card’
At the end, there’s a bonus section for paid subscribers discussing what I believe to be the most under-appreciated factor that could sway EU natural gas prices in 2025. And no, the 2025 ‘wild card’ for TTF is not the weather, LNG outages or even geopolitics (although these will obviously be important too).
10: The storage-speculation nexus (part 1)
5.19k views
The first of this two-part series marked an exploratory foray into the role of storage regulations in distorting natural gas price formation. After the EU once again hit its 90% refilling target more than two months early, I was prompted by a couple of readers to ask the heretical question: is the restocking mandate actually stoking volatility?
9. Everything must go!
5.37k views
Rapid depletion of EU gas storage levels fuelled a strong revival in bullish price momentum in November, triggering a cacophony of alarmist commentary invoking the energy market chaos of 2022. But a careful examination of the facts revealed a more nuanced picture than the knee-jerk hot-takes would have you believe:
8. Turning point?
5.43k views
The positioning of hedge funds on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF, the EU benchmark gas trading hub) was arguably the biggest and most under-reported EU energy story of 2024. When funds tempered bullish bets in September, prices duly subsided — but only temporarily. The ‘turning point’ turned out to be just a blip, and my broad bearish thesis was proven wrong (premature?) throughout the first half of winter. The old adage about markets staying irrational for longer than rational actors can remain solvent bit hard in 2024:
7. Renewables are crushing gas-fired power
5.58k views
Everyone knows that wind and solar are incrementally stealing power market share from gas, but it’s only when you quantify the trend that its pace and significance become apparent. This deep-dive analysed ENTSO-E data to gauge the depth of the gas power slump at the EU level. Most interesting for me was the degree of nuance and variability between member states:
The other side of the EU gas power story was rising thermal capture rates, which I covered in a separate article in September. I will continues tracking these RE/gas power trends in 2025.
6. The mask slips
5.58k views
Sometimes it can be hard to find the right words to capture what’s going on in energy markets. But occasionally, the sheer farcicality of events ignites a spark of inspiration. This piece about the Azerbaijan fake news ‘flash crash’ on TTF in September was one of those moments; not all analysts are afforded the latitude to write an opening sentence like this one (or to use conceptual images in this way):
5. The TTF transparency gap
5.66k views
When I first discovered just how much speculative capital is sloshing around the EU gas market, I was determined to gain the fullest possible understanding of fund positioning along the TTF forward curve. But I soon found that EU regulators are deliberately withholding this data in the name of commercial confidentiality. In hindsight, this essay raging against the transparency gap also revealed a few of my own knowledge gaps (which I’ve since sought to fill).
My frustrations around TTF transparency drove me to undertake an original data research piece that proved to be the #1 most read article of 2024 — see below…
4. The Asian LNG glut is here
5.69k views
The LNG market witnessed a steep correction in early 2024, pushing Asian spot prices below long-term oil indexed contracts. Recalling those events feels like a lifetime ago, but at that time it really did feel like the long-anticipated LNG glut was starting to manifest. This provocative headline was definitely premature, but the observation that inverted oil slope-spot differentials would prove fleeting was much closer to the mark:
3. Madness at the margins
6.03k views
An intense debate erupted in the UK last year over locational pricing in the GB power market. But the rationale for linking electricity prices to the most expensive marginal generation unit went largely unscrutinised. This less-discussed aspect of power price formation matters, but nothing is being done about it. Here’s why, and what it means for the energy transition:
2. Fever pitch
6.25k views
EU energy market volatility boiled over into fresh 2024 TTF highs in November amid intensifying uncertainty surrounding Ukraine gas transits. This post warned of a sting in the tail for investment funds positioning for a one-way bet on rising prices. Now that transit halt risk has become reality, is the fever finally about to break?
And, drumroll please… 🥁🥁🥁the top-read story of 2024 was:
1. The storage-speculation nexus (part 2)
6.26k views
The best way for this newsletter to serve its readers is by offering market-critical information that is simply unavailable elsewhere. Doing so consistently requires endless hours of hard graft and data wrangling. So it is gratifying to see that the most read article of 2024 was this investigation revealing how hedge funds are positioned along the TTF forward curve — the sort of data that regulators don’t publish in the name of commercial confidentiality. With help from a few avid readers and generous sector experts, I learned quite a lot about EU gas markets in 2024. This piece is the high watermark of that journey of discovery so far — and it is just the start.
My New Year’s resolution
This exercise has taught me to be more circumspect in 2025. Energy markets are incredibly fickle, and none more so than natural gas. There’s very little predictive power in dogma, and wishful thinking doesn’t change economic reality.
I also need to reflect more on human psychology (markets are governed by sentiment, which is a function of subjective perception) and how this interacts with artificial intelligence and algorithmic trading in deeply liquid futures markets.
If you’re also searching for clarity in this space, hit me up. It’s an incredibly complex topic, and I find chewing things over can unlock new insights. Plus, I always enjoy hearing from readers.
💥2025: pivotal year, or 2024 redux?
At the start of every year, an endless stream of experts crops up to tell us the many reasons why the next 12 months will be a ‘pivotal year’ in energy. 2025 may or may not live up to that description; EU gas and LNG markets might pivot into a new pricing regime, or we could see more of the same gravity-defying volatility.
Geopolitics loomed large over 2024, drawing out Europe’s post-crisis trauma. Artificially exaggerated risk perception outgunned supply-demand fundamentals throughout the second half of the year.
The extent to which hedge funds intrinsically understood this is an open question; what is indisputable is that buying the mainstream scarcity narrative paid off, despite flying in the face of so many facts telling a different story.
This mindset could well continue beyond the end of winter. There are simply too many influential voices repeating the same empty warnings for enough market participants to stop believing it overnight.
With the world lurching towards a scary new phase of global conflict and insecurity, this year could follow a similar pattern. Speculative capital is still primed aggressively for the EU gas restocking season, and I fully expect the same alarmist narrative wars to define trading momentum in 2025.
That said, there is one less-discussed factor that could rewrite the script for 2025 and possibly even accelerate the dawn of the ‘LNG glut’ and structurally loose market pricing conditions.
This bonus section for paying subscribers discusses what could be the ‘wild card’ for gas markets in 2025 🃏