The natural gas market in Europe suddenly got a lot tighter this week, with two unexpected supply outages wreaking havoc across the continent, forcing Italy to declare a state of emergency. The first incident that made big headlines was the crack in the Forties pipeline in the North Sea, which caused Brent crude oil prices to immediately spike . The outage of the crucial 450,000 bpd pipeline sent a jolt through the oil market and was felt around the world, not only because it interrupted oil flows but also because of the influence the pipeline system has on the Brent futures contract. But the shuttering of the pipeline system will also affect natural gas. At least two UK natural gas fields – the Elgin-Franklin and Britannia – were forced to shut down because of the outage at the Forties system. Those two fields produce a combined 20 million cubic […]