A strike is brewing among Australian gas workers, which sends the price of gas in Europe skyrocketing on Monday morning.

The price of the leading Dutch gas futures rose 18% in the morning to EUR 42.90 per MW-hour.

According to Bloomberg News, this is because Australian workers on an important liquefied natural gas export project are preparing to strike if an agreement is not reached with their employer Woodside Energy Group by Wednesday.

This comes on top of the fact that employees at energy giant Chevron began voting on a possible walkout last week.

Widespread strikes in Australia could affect up to 10% of global liquefied natural gas exports.

However, Europe generally has sufficient stocks for the winter and rarely imports natural gas from Australia, Bloomberg writes. Nevertheless, the strike warnings have caused great nervousness among European energy traders over the past month.

(Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Simon Øst Vejbæk)