Crude · Issue No. 25 · 2 November 2026

What Europe's Gas Is Paying For at 100 Euros

This week: Gas above 100 euros · Riyadh talks in Tehran · Pumps on borrowed time

Lead Story

What Europe's Gas Is Paying For at 100 Euros

The wholesale gas price crossed a line it last crossed in 2022, in a week when oil hardly moved, and the days of the week point two ways.

Europe's gas price settled above 100 euros this week for the first time since 2022.

The Dutch TTF contract for November delivery, the wholesale price most European gas is traded against, crossed that line on Wednesday. On Friday the December contract, which took over when November expired, settled at 103.944 euros a megawatt hour. Oil barely moved. Brent's December contract ended its life on Friday at 117.64 dollars a barrel, less than one percent above where it stood a week earlier.

So the question for a European reader is what the gas price is now paying for. If it is paying for the war in the Gulf, a ceasefire takes much of it away. If it is paying for a winter entered with thin storage, a ceasefire changes little before the spring.

The case for winter looks strong on paper. EU storage stood at 74.7 percent on 30 October 2026 against a five year average of 89.8 for the date, and Austria and Slovakia were already drawing their tanks down. QatarEnergy has told Italy's Edison that its cargoes stay suspended to the end of December, and ACER, the EU's energy regulator, says no significant Qatari gas reached Europe all summer. On Monday, while Riyadh's defence minister was in Tehran for talks, oil fell and gas rose three percent.

But Friday does not fit that reading. On Thursday a tanker in Hormuz was hit by limpet mines, on Friday another was evacuated after a fire, and Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed tankers had exploded. Gas rose about six percent on Friday, more than twice as much as oil. A price that had stopped listening to the Gulf would not have done that.

The opposite reading is that gas trades the war harder than oil because it has no cushion, while oil has emergency stock releases behind it. Wednesday supports that. Gas jumped almost five percent on a report that Washington had told Gulf states to prepare for strikes after the American midterm elections, while oil rose a little over one. Yet Monday points the other way, and oil's own cushion did not stop Brent rising by more than a tenth in October.

The week was more complicated still. Gas slipped on Tuesday, the day the Houthis said they had hit a Saudi refinery. So the week's Gulf news does not line up with gas in one direction, while storage stalled throughout, which leaves the two causes impossible to separate on five days of trading.

For a household the move is easy to size once it reaches the tariff. A home that burns 1,500 kilowatt hours of gas in a winter month would pay about 10.30 euros more that month if the whole rise were passed on, before taxes and network charges. Europe's wholesale gas price rose from 93.853 to 100.720 euros a megawatt hour between 23 and 28 October 2026, a rise of 6.867 euros, or about 0.69 euro cents a kilowatt hour, since a megawatt hour is 1,000 kilowatt hours.

What would settle it is the first day the Gulf sends a clean signal. The call: if the United States and Iran announce a ceasefire or agreement before the end of 2026, the TTF front month, the contract for the nearest month of delivery, settles at least five percent lower on the next trading day. If it falls by less than that, or rises, gas is pricing the winter more than the war, and the call is wrong.

Geopolitics

Riyadh Talks in Tehran While Missiles Fly at Its Refineries

Saudi Arabia sent its defence minister to Iran in a week when its oil sites were named as targets twice.

On Monday 26 October 2026 Saudi Arabia's defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, met Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran, alongside Pakistan's army chief and Turkey's intelligence chief. The next day Yemen's Houthi movement claimed a ballistic missile strike on Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery, and a source told Bloomberg that a fire near the terminal had been contained. On Thursday the Houthis claimed six more attacks, on Ras Tanura again, the Rabigh refinery on the Red Sea, the Abqaiq processing plant, airports in Riyadh and Dammam and a military headquarters in Najran. Riyadh has reported no damage to its oil sites from any of them.

Riyadh has decided it can hold talks in Tehran without waiting for the missiles to stop.

That matters for Europe because the Red Sea side of the kingdom is the side that faces it. Rabigh sits on that coast, and Saudi cargoes for European refiners leave from Yanbu, on the same coast, rather than through the Strait of Hormuz. In practice a Houthi campaign that keeps naming Red Sea sites threatens the one Saudi route to Europe that avoids the strait. That is why talks in Tehran are worth more to a refiner in Gdansk than any missile intercepted over Riyadh.

In Focus: Pumps

Europe's Pump Prices Are Leaning on Tax Cuts That Expire

Petrol got cheaper in the latest EU survey, but in Austria and Germany part of what drivers pay is being held down by a date written into law.

The European Commission's survey of pump prices on 26 October 2026 put the EU average for petrol almost four cents a litre lower than a week earlier, while diesel rose. In two Central European markets, part of that price is set by governments rather than by crude.

Austria's fuel price brake cuts the mineral oil tax by 6.7 cents a litre and caps fuel margins by 3.5 cents, about 12 cents of relief once VAT is included, and it is due to end on 30 November 2026. Germany's energy tax cut of 14.04 cents a litre on petrol and diesel runs until 31 December 2026.

That changes what the next two months mean at the pump. Because the relief is a fixed sum with a fixed end date, the pump price rises by roughly the whole cut on the day it lapses, whatever Brent does. That means an Austrian driver faces a step up in December and a German driver another in January, even in a calm oil market.

Take Action

If you pay a European energy bill

1. Time your last Austrian fill ups of the year before 30 November 2026, when the fuel price brake of about 12 cents a litre is due to end. On a 50 litre tank that is about 6 euros a fill.
2. Plan for January if you drive in Germany, where the 14.04 cent cut is worth about 16.7 cents a litre with VAT and lapses on 31 December 2026. A household buying 50 litres a week would pay about 8.35 euros a week more if it is not renewed.

If you follow the market

3. Test this issue's question on the first clean Gulf day. If Washington and Tehran announce a ceasefire, compare the next trading day's TTF settlement with the one before: a fall of five percent or more says gas was pricing the war.
4. Note the EU storage reading on 1 December 2026, the end of the window in which each member state is meant to reach 90 percent, less the regulation's flexibilities. Austria and Slovakia are already drawing down.
5. Weigh Brent's new front month. January settled more than 4 dollars below the expiring December contract on Friday, which says the market pays more for oil delivered in December than for oil delivered a month later.