Bloomberg: the price of natural gas in the U.S. has surged by nearly 20 percent.
The price of natural gas in the U.S. has surged by nearly 20 percent. This is reported by Bloomberg.
The cost of the blue fuel skyrocketed due to freezing temperatures affecting much of the country. An arctic storm led to a sharp increase in heating demand, resulting in supply disruptions.
Futures contracts for fuel delivery rose above six dollars per million British thermal units (BTU, just under 29 cubic meters) for the first time since 2022. A week earlier, gas prices had soared by 70 percent — the largest weekly increase on record since 1990.
Due to the winter storm, nearly 10 percent of natural gas production in the U.S. was halted, while demand for heating and power generation fuel sharply increased. Severe frosts led to overloads in power grids and disrupted transportation, causing thousands of flights to be canceled. The largest U.S. grid operator insists that power plants ensure uninterrupted supplies of natural gas, as electricity consumption is expected to reach a winter peak due to low temperatures.
Traders were caught off guard by the scale of disruptions in key export centers. The start of the year in global gas markets has been unstable, and more serious consequences than those already factored into prices could lead to further price increases, Bloomberg notes.
James O'Brien, head of trading at D.Trading, a division of Ukraine's largest private energy company DTEK, stated that liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from the U.S. to Europe are not a risk for Ukraine, but a lifeline. Currently, Kyiv is seeking to increase cooperation with American suppliers to cope with supply shortages in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European countries. According to O'Brien, the U.S. market remains the most liquid in the world.
