The benchmark European gas price, traded on the Dutch TTF hub, rose by as much as 45% to around €46 per megawatt-hour in early afternoon trading.
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UK natural gas prices also surged, with the NBP benchmark climbing sharply in tandem with continental markets.
High market volatility has driven sharp minute-by-minute swings.
The sharp increase follows US and Israeli strikes on Iran, which have heightened tensions in a region critical to global energy flows.
QatarEnergy announced early Monday afternoon that it had halted liquefied natural gas production linked to the giant North Field gas reservoir following an attack on its facilities, but gave no further details as to the extent of the impact on operations.
Strait of Hormuz disruption raises global concerns
A large proportion of the world’s energy supply comes from the Middle East, and before the announcement from Qatar, the seaborne oil and gas transport was at the centre of market fears.
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow maritime passage largely controlled by Iran, is one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints for oil and LNG, including exports from Qatar.
Iran has moved to block traffic through the strait following the strikes, raising concerns about supply interruptions.
“In modern history, the Strait of Hormuz has never been actually closed, albeit a temporary slowing of traffic has occurred,” said Maurizio Carulli, global energy analyst at Quilter Cheviot.
He added that “about 20% of global oil supply transits through the Strait of Hormuz and 38% of seaborne crude oil trade.”
Carulli does not expect oil shipping companies to send through their vessels until “the military situation de-escalates”, due to the risk of ship damage or seizures, as well as temporary unavailability of insurance cover.
“Satellite data shows that oil tanker transit had virtually halted over the weekend, a precautionary measure by shipping companies,” he added.
Any sustained disruption could affect LNG shipments from Qatar, which supplies around 12% to 14% of Europe’s LNG imports.
Europe exposed to global competition
While Europe does not rely primarily on Qatari gas, analysts say the indirect impact could still be significant.
If supplies to Asia are disrupted, buyers there may seek alternative cargoes, increasing global competition for LNG.
This would likely push prices higher worldwide, including in Europe.
Qatar, the world’s third-largest LNG exporter after the United States and Australia, has become an increasingly important supplier to Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced European countries to reduce their dependence on Russian pipeline gas.
Low storage levels increase vulnerability
Europe’s relatively low gas storage levels have added to market anxiety.
Storage across the European Union is currently below 30% capacity as the winter heating season draws to a close, compared with around 40% at the same point last year.
Germany and France, the bloc’s two largest economies, are among the most vulnerable.
Germany’s gas storage facilities were 20.5% full as of Saturday, while France’s stood at 21%, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe.
Lower reserves leave countries more vulnerable to supply disruptions and price volatility, particularly if global LNG markets tighten further.
MILAN — She flipped her hair. She shrugged. She dusted her hands off.
Alysa Liu makes winning an Olympic gold medal look easy.
The 20-year-old became the first U.S. woman to win the Olympic singles title since 2002, electrifying the crowd at Milano Ice Skating Arena with her “MacArthur Park” program Thursday and overtaking Japanese rivals Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai, who won second and third, respectively.
Liu scored a monster 150.20 points in her free skate, the highest mark for a women’s free skate all season in international competition to win by a total of 1.89 points. Her choreographer Massimo Scali’s jaw dropped when he heard the score read in Italian. A beat later when the screen caught up to the public address announcement in the stadium, Liu nodded confidently and cracked a subtle smirk.
American gold medalist Alysa Liu hugs Japanese bronze medalist Ami Nakai after their final scores were revealed at the Winter Olympics on Thursday in Milan.
(Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
She doesn’t care about the scores.
Liu, who grew up in Oakland, has floated through her second Olympics as if she had not a single care in the world. A two-year retirement during which she climbed Mt. Everest, got her driver’s license and started college at UCLA made skating feel inconsequential. Now so unbothered, Liu spent part of her six-minute warmup cheering on teammate Amber Glenn in the leader’s chair. Minutes before taking the ice, Liu snapped a selfie with her coaches. She gives her coaches a high-five right before taking her starting position.
“She’s not like us,” her coach Phillip Diguglielmo said. “The rest of us here would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m nervous. Oh, I can’t do this. I have a million voices in my head.’ She has one voice in her head, and it says, ‘I got this.’”
The only emotions Liu felt during her program were “calm, happy and confident.” When she sees the faces in the crowd smile, Liu said she can’t help but smile, too. And there was a lot of smiling. Her Donna Summer disco program had fans clapping within the first minute. Diguglielmo and Scali held their hands overhead to join the roar. Liu’s pre-program message to the crowd on the video board was “Y’all better turn up!”
Liu, who won the 2025 world championship with the same crowd-pleasing program, returned to the sport in 2024 with the sole objective of sharing her art. She wanted to make as many programs as possible. Winning never seemed to matter. With the gold medal hanging around her neck, Liu stopped short of saying she even wanted it. She surely didn’t need it, she said.
“What I needed was the stage,” Liu said. “And I got that.”
Once Liu processed the final scores, she rose to her feet and turned toward Nakai, clapping for the 17-year-old. Nakai, skating in her first Olympics, was shocked. She held up three fingers to Liu, asking if she had finished on the podium. Overjoyed, they hugged. Liu picked Nakai, who had entered the free skate in first place, up off the ground.
Sakamoto was less than a point ahead of Liu entering Thursday’s free skate, but small mistakes from the three-time world champion, in addition to Liu’s strong technique and infectious energy made Liu the first U.S. woman to win the Olympic gold medal since Sarah Hughes in 2002. The United States’ 20-year drought without a medal — since Sasha Cohen took silver in 2006 — was the country’s longest.
Liu held her palms up in disbelief after finishing the program of her life that put her in the lead with two competitors remaining. She leaned into the camera and pointed to the piercing on the inside of her upper lip. She did it herself.
With blond horizontal stripes dyed in her dark brown hair, bold black eyeliner and the smiley lip piercing, Liu has cut an alternative path to the top of a sport that long valued a specific kind of femininity. But the slick back bun, classical music and balletic dress was not Liu’s brand.
Her brand is joy.
And now as just the second figure skater in history to win two Olympic gold medals at the same Olympic Games — joining U.S. star Nathan Chen — Liu has the stage, and the attention, to display her joy for the next generation of athletes.
“People will be able to see how she approaches the sport now versus before and see how much more successful it is now in a healthy way,” Glenn said. “And I’m hoping people can really learn from that.”
Glenn got redemption after the short program, putting up a season’s best 147.52 during her free skate that vaulted her from 13th to fifth with a 214.91 total score. The only blemish was when Glenn put one hand down on her final jump — the same triple loop that cost her in her short program. But as she held one leg behind her during a spiral in her last sequence, Glenn smiled as she looked into the crowd. After the program, she whipped her fist through the air triumphantly.
The performance put a positive punctuation mark on Glenn’s winding Olympic journey. She has faced intense scrutiny at the Games. The same pressure that consumed Glenn and teammate Ilia Malinin could not even touch Liu’s glowing aura.
When asked Thursday if she felt any “Olympic pressure,” Liu smiled.
“You would have to explain what Olympic pressure is,” she said.
Then she bounced away, the gold medal around her neck blending perfectly with her gold dress.
MILAN — He raised up the Quad King. He refined the jump that defined the Quad God.
From a sprawling ice facility in Irvine, Rafael Arutyunyan could just be the “Quad Maker.”
The 68-year-old figure skating coach is renowned as one of the best technicians in the world. He trained Olympic champion Nathan Chen starting when the “Quad King” was 10 years old. Four years after Chen became the first U.S. man to win singles Olympic gold since 2010, Arutyunyan could have a second consecutive pupil on top of the Olympic podium.
Ilia Malinin, who has worked with Arutyunyan part time since 2021, is the only person in the world to land a quad axel and is the overwhelming favorite for men’s gold at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games.
American Ilia Malinin celebrates with his coaches, including Rafael Arutyunyan to the right, during the world skating championship in March 2025.
(Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
The walls in Arutyunyan’s office at Irvine’s Great Park Ice, where he is the head coach of the high performance team, are plastered with photos of stars including Chen, Michelle Kwan, Adam Rippon and Ashley Wagner. They each came to his door with dreams of perfecting their performances, making it to the Olympics or, in some cases, revolutionizing the sport. They scribbled messages over their pictures saying: “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Rafael is more like the dream maker,” said Rippon, the 2016 U.S. champion and 2018 Olympic team bronze medalist. “… Rafael is able to take each of his students’ individual goals on a case-by-case basis, and he’s able to help the athletes go after whatever that goal is they’re trying to achieve.”
Malinin came with a lofty goal. Even his father Roman Skornikov — an Olympian for Uzbekistan who coaches his son with his wife, Tatiana Malinina — thought the idea of doing four-and-a-half revolutions in one jump was crazy.
Arytyunyan assured him Malinin could do the quad axel.
The coach of nearly 50 years just looked at the 5-foot-9 Malinin and could tell. It was his slender body type, natural athleticism and strong technique that made Arutyunyan know the jump many thought was impossible could be done. They discussed small technical tweaks to Malinin’s entry. A short two to three months later, Malinin, who trains primarily with his parents in his native Virginia, sent a video of him landing the quad axel in practice.
“The way he explains is really good. And he explains in like, metaphors and analogies that you’re surprised to hear,” said Malinin, who debuted the quad axel in 2022 when he was 17. “They work really well because it helps you get a different perspective on a technique or how he explains.”
Arutyunyan instructed Malinin to think of himself as a slingshot while approaching his jumps. Skaters know to gain power from deep edges that carve circles into the ice, but Artutyunyan describes it like a person riding a motorcycle: The rider tilts side to side just like a skater’s blade glides over the ice. Over time as he gets more familiar with a skater, Arutyunyan communicates through hand signals to show how their blades are interacting with the ice. Learning to manipulate the blade with Arutyunyan made Rippon feel as if he truly learned how to skate.
“He is a genius,” said Mariah Bell, a 2022 Olympian and U.S. champion.
Nathen Chen celebrates with coach Rafael Arutyunyan after competingin the 2020 U.S. Figure Skating Championships Greensboro, N.C.
(Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
With the exception of Chen, many of Arutyunyan’s students came to him later in their careers. It takes a special eye and tenacity for a coach to rewire decades of bad habits, Bell said.
Arutyunyan loves it.
“I am emergency room for skaters,” he said. “Many people comes to me as emergency and I start to fix it.”
Arutyunyan is equipped to solve the most dire skating situations because after nearly 50 years as a coach, he’s seen it all already. Arutyunyan, who began coaching in his native Armenia, was first trained in the Soviet style that relied on biomechanics and physiology to unlock efficient jumping techniques. European and American teachings focused more on compulsory figures, the basic patterns skaters would trace across the ice that give the sport its name.
Arutyunyan, who came to the United States in 2000 from Russia, blended both into a signature style that has top skaters traveling from all corners of the globe seeking his help.
“Why I think he’s one of the best coaches in the world,” Rippon said, “is that he’s never not learning.”
After a promising juniors career in which he was named junior national champion in 2015 and competed at the 2020 world junior championships, Andrew Torgashev knew he had competitive ability and presentation. But wanting to step up his senior career, Torgashev, 24, knew he needed to tame his wild technique. Performing his programs felt like “going to the casino,” Torgashev said.
“Red or black,” Torgashev said with a smile, “who knows what’s going to happen?”
Since relocating to California from Colorado in 2019, Torgashev, a Florida native whose parents were both elite international figure skaters, reworked every aspect of his skating with Arutyunyan. He was always skating on his toes when he should have been on his heels. They changed his three-turn — one of the first things skaters learn when skating on one foot — to find more power. They tinkered with his crossovers and his camel spin.
It took years. Much of it was disheartening.
“I felt like, ‘what’s the point of this? I’m losing jumps, he’s ruining me,’” Torgashev said. “But he always has a method to his madness.”
The method finally yielded results after two years. Injuries kept Torgashev out of competition for two seasons. But he finished second at the 2023 Eastern Sectional Championships and ahead of the 2023 U.S. championships, he was performing his programs more consistently than ever in practice.
After finishing on the podium at U.S. championships in three of the last four years, including two consecutive silver medals, Torgashev will make his Olympic debut in Milan.
“He’s forced me to be very resilient and independent and trust myself, trust what I’ve learned from him, and try to take that with me to competition,” Torgashev said. “I think it’s the best move I made in my life.”
Arutyunyan’s ability to take established, struggling skaters and put them into the podium conversation is how he believes he first started getting respect in the United States. When he emigrated from Russia, he was searching simply for freedom, he said.
He never thought it would turn into a hall of fame career.
Arutyunyan was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in January at the U.S. Championships. At the induction ceremony in St. Louis, Arutyunyan waved toward a packed crowd and bowed his head. He looked forward to the ceremony because it was a chance to see his students again. What thrilled him most was getting to rub elbows with other Hall of Famers such as Brian Boitano, Dorothy Hamill and Scott Hamilton. The Olympic and world champions were Arutyunyan’s idols, he said giddily.
After 50 years of helping skaters achieve their dreams, the man who was always behind the scenes got to live his.
