Global IT disruption impacts energy trading, no issues so far in chems sector

LONDON (ICIS)–Companies including financial services were hit by a global IT outage on Friday, with disruptions partly affecting energy trading.

The chemicals sector currently appears unaffected though Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub in Gdansk, was reportedly having some issues.

Trayport, a key data platfrom for European wholesale energy markets, issued a statement warning the outage was affecting some of its key services.

“We are currently facing infrastructure issues due to a global outage with a third-party service provider” Trayport said in a statement.

Trayport added it was currently implementing workarounds, and customers may begin to see some of Trayport services become available.

“We continue to work closely with the vendor to resolve the situation as soon as possible,” it added.

ICIS continued to receive trade information on European gas and power markets spread across multiple trading venues.

However, traders contacted by ICIS reported issues:

“Servers are not accessible for the moment. We can trade but not book deals,” one trader said.

A power trading source has said systems were unaffected in some countries.

A gas trader in northern Europe said that some brokers were impacted, but that major exchange platforms were functioning as usual. Some trading companies are also faced internal IT issues.

European power exchange EPEX SPOT reported a partial decoupling on the OMIE area, which includes Spanish and Portuguese power markets, for the IDA3 auctions, although it did not indicate whether it was related to the global IT outage. But the group reported a normal market status for most other markets and order book closures were also reported as being on time.

Additional reporting by Clare Pennington