BASF curtailed Ludwigshafen in 2022 for the first time since 1865. Yara shut four plants when TTF crossed €40/MWh. The 2021 contracts that covered chemicals CFOs through that year expire in H1 2026. The Islamabad Memorandum brought TTF to ~€40 briefly in early July. Path 3 activation brought it back to €48.8 (11 July close). The supply floor has a permanent component: Ras Laffan trains 4 and 6 — 12.8 million tonnes/year of LNG capacity — are offline for 3-5 years regardless of when Hormuz resolves.
BASF curtailed production at Ludwigshafen in 2022 for the first time since 1865. Yara closed four European ammonia plants — 35% of European production capacity — when TTF crossed €40/MWh in Q3 2022. The contracts from 2021 expire in H1 2026.
TTF is at €48.8/MWh (11 July 2026 close). The June range ran €40–50; the MoU window briefly brought TTF toward €40; the 8-10 July re-escalation drove +12% over three sessions back to €50 intraday, closing at €48.8. The 2022 BASF curtailment threshold (~€40) is being breached continuously. The signal that made the 2021 decision correct is active again — and the supply floor has a structural component that persists regardless of Hormuz resolution.
The permanent damage read. Ras Laffan trains 4 and 6 — 12.8 million tonnes/year of Qatar LNG capacity — were struck by Iranian missiles 18-19 March 2026. QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi: repairs will sideline this capacity for 3-5 years. That is not a Hormuz-resolution story. When Hormuz reopens, TTF will not return to the pre-crisis floor it started from, because 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity is structurally absent from the supply side for 3-5 years. Your Q3/Q4 forward cover position — and your FY2027 and FY2028 hedging cycle — sits inside that supply floor.
Gas forward cover Q3/Q4 2026. Review current hedge position against Q3/Q4 exposure. Act on forward contracts before Brent re-escalation feeds into TTF via LNG arbitrage. The window is the forward market — not the spot. Once spot confirms disruption duration, forward retraces unavailability.
Customer contract review. Identify fixed-price customer contracts that do not contain energy pass-through clauses. Quantify the margin exposure at current TTF trajectory. The 2022 lesson: contracts without pass-through became the single largest margin compressor — and they were identifiable six months before the compression landed.
Production threshold review. Identify the TTF level at which each production line becomes uneconomic. €40/MWh was the Yara threshold. Pre-commit the curtailment decision before it becomes emergency management. The organisations that planned curtailment in advance carried through 2022 with cleaner operational sequencing than those that decided under peak pressure.
Twelve minutes. The diagnostic reads your current gas exposure and customer contract map against the live signal environment — before the next cover cycle prints.
Run the diagnostic → Back to Signal Watch