The euro fell to a 20-year low on Tuesday and is settling below par with the dollar. At 0.9909, the common currency temporarily reached its lowest value since the end of 2002. In July, the looming recession in the euro zone and the growing interest rate differential with the USA caused the euro to slip below one dollar for the first time since 2002. Recession worries had already increased at the beginning of the week after the Russian exporter Gazprom announced that Germany would again temporarily receive no gas through the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline at the end of the month. The anxious question for the market is therefore whether the flow of gas may soon dry up completely, stated Antje Praefcke from Commerzbank.
“Of course yesterday’s rise in gas prices is bad news all round,” said Kenneth Broux, currency strategist at Societe Generale. The fear of bottlenecks had pushed the European gas future up by 20 percent to EUR 292.50 per megawatt hour at the start of the week. On Tuesday it was trading slightly lower at 265 euros.
Prices rose on the oil market. Market observers referred to statements by the Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, who had hinted at a possible reduction in oil production by the oil cartel Opec Plus and thus stopped the recent price losses in oil prices. A barrel of North Sea Brent rose by almost four percent to $100. Oil market prices did not reflect underlying supply and demand fundamentals, the Saudi minister told Bloomberg. That could prompt the Opec+ oil association to cut production. Most recently, oil prices had come under pressure with an economic slowdown in leading industrialized countries.