UK GAS-Prices extend gains far beyond seasonal norms on outages

May 31 (Reuters) - British wholesale gas prices rose on Thursday as several installations prepared for - or were already in - outage, climbing far above seasonal averages despite consumption staying below norms for this time of the year.

* Within-day contract up 1.1 pence at 61.50 p/therm at 0810 GMT

* Day-ahead gas price up 1.55 pence at 61.00 p/therm

* Prices for both contracts have been climbing steadily in May from around 53 p to over 60 p/therm and are far above seasonal averages.

* Prices ranged between 35 and 45 p/therm in the month of May last year and between 28 and 35 p/therm in 2016.

* Deliveries from the North Morecambe gas terminal remained at zero, according to National Grid (LSE: NG.L - news) data, after an unplanned outage starting on Wednesday.

* Gas deliveries at the Bacton gas terminal from North Sea fields will be at zero and there will be no gas processed at the Teesside plant as of Friday.

* There will also be reduced capacities at two gas terminals at St Fergus terminal in Scotland this week.

* Flows along the Vesterled pipeline, one of two main arteries form Norway, remained at zero after an outage there.

* The gas system was undersupplied by almost 12 million cubic metres (mcm) with demand seen at 154.3 mcm, below the seasonal average of 185 mcm, and supply forecast at 142.5 mcm.

* Adding pressure to gas prices, wind generation is expected to drop on Thursday and Friday to less than 10 percent of capacity.

* Peak wind power generation is forecast at 996 megawatts (MW) on Thursday and 683 MW on Friday from 3.7 GW on Wednesday, according to National Grid data.

* Fresh liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries will add to gas supplies when two cargoes arrive on Saturday (Shenzhen: 002291.SZ - news) from Trinidad and Algeria.

* Further out on the curve, the June contract was up 0.65 p at 59.30 p/therm.

* Day-ahead gas price at the Dutch TTF hub up 0.42 euro at 23.17 euros per megawatt-hour.

* Benchmark Dec-18 EU carbon contract down 0.21 euro at 15.63 euros per tonne. (Reporting by Sabina Zawadzki; Editing by Mark Potter)