U.S. natural gas slumps as LNG plant shutdown strands supplies
BNN Bloomberg
U.S. natural gas futures plummeted and European prices surged after the operator of a key Texas export terminal said it may take three months to partially restart the facility following a fire last week.
The new timeline from Freeport LNG is much longer than many market participants had anticipated and matches the worst-case scenario posited by at least one analyst. Freeport previously said its facility would remain closed for at least three weeks.
Gas for next-month delivery in New York tumbled as much as 19 per cent to US$7.008 per million British thermal units, as the shutdown threatens to leave supply stranded in US shale basins. Futures settled down 16.5 per cent at US$7.189.
The prolonged outage is bad news for European consumers who have scrambled in recent months to find alternative supplies after the war in Ukraine jeopardized imports of Russian gas. European gas futures on the Title Transfer facility hub in Amsterdam jumped as much as 21 per cent to 101 euros per megawatt-hour.
