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Natural-gas Prices Are Spiking Around the World (economist.com) 135

Across the world, a natural-gas shortage is starting to bite. Prices of power in Germany and France have soared by around 40% in the past two weeks. In many countries, including Britain and Spain, governments are rushing through emergency measures to protect consumers. Economist: Factories are being temporarily switched off, from aluminium smelters in Mexico to fertiliser plants in Britain. Markets are frantic. One trader says it is like the global financial crisis for commodities. Even in America, the world's biggest natural-gas producer, lobby groups are calling on the government to limit exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the price of which has climbed to $25 per million British thermal units (mBTU), up by two-thirds in the past month. In one sense the crisis has fiendishly complex causes, with a mosaic of factors from geopolitics to precautionary hoarding in Asia sending prices higher. Viewed from a different perspective, however, its causes are simple: an energy market with only thin safety buffers has become acutely sensitive to disruptions. And subdued investment in fossil fuels may mean higher volatility is here to stay.

The shortfall has taken almost everyone by surprise. In 2019 there was plenty of gas on the international market, thanks to new LNG plants coming online in America (see chart). When the covid pandemic struck and lockdown constrained demand, much of the excess gas went into storage in Europe. That came in handy last winter, which was particularly cold in northern Asia and Europe. The freeze pushed up demand for heating. In Asia gas prices quadrupled in three months. Buyers, such as national gas companies, looked to the LNG market to fill out supply. Many Europe-destined cargoes were diverted to Asia. Europe, by contrast, drew down on its reserves. Prices there only inched up. This year odd weather has featured again. A hot summer has added to booming gas demand in Asia. The region accounts for almost three-quarters of global LNG imports, according to AllianceBernstein, a financial firm.

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Natural-gas Prices Are Spiking Around the World

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  • Good (partially). (Score:5, Interesting)

    by U0K ( 6195040 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @12:37PM (#61848365)
    Maybe that'll wake up some of those lunatics here in Germany who thought that it was a smart move tapping Putin's ass and making us dependent on it.
    It's not too late to still do a sensible thing and return to state of the art nuclear.
    • It's far too late ... Putin had us by the balls for 2 decades, he would have had us by the balls even if the gas went through Ukraine.

      • Re:Good (partially). (Score:5, Interesting)

        by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @02:06PM (#61848703) Homepage
        You are barking up the wrong tree.

        First of all the ones who Putin has "by the Balls" get gas. At a discounted price - it is tied up to the price of oil. It is the ones that claimed to be free who are suffering.

        Second, the ones to really blame are the Australians. Additional blame is to be administered to the cretinous imbeciles who invented the UK regulatory model and the Barrosso Eu commission which borrowed it to the Eu as a part of the 3rd energy market package.

        The sequence of events is as follows:

        0. At some point some total nincompoop comes up with the UK energy market model which unbundled and decoupled retail, regional and grid.

        1. Barrosso commission borrows this model as a foundation of 3rd energy market package. All Eu countries are forced to move to market gas and coal purchases instead of long term contracts (as offered by Russia).

        2. Comrade Xi bans coal use in households and moves his country to mostly electric heating (heat pump or direct) to prevent his population rebelling because of catastrophic pollution levels.

        3. Australians jump on Comrade Xi. Comrade Xi stops buying coal and LNG from Australia

        4. China runs into problems with energy supply. They will not buy from Australia for political reasons and alternative suppliers, namely Russia, Qatar and African countries cannot satisfy their demand. They had blackouts last week and most provinces are on energy rationing as of yesterday.

        5. China is willing to pay pretty much anything for gas and coal.

        6. Prices in China now determine European prices for everyone except the ones who have long term contracts with the Russians. That means most Eu countries which have embraced the British invented and Barrosso promoted imbecilic idea that a LIMITED commodity on which you build your entire economy can be market traded instead of contracted at a long term fixed price.

        7. The ones who benefit most are the Norwegians. While the Russians till this day insist on long term contracts and offer relatively little gas on the free market, Norway embraced the 3rd package and is now benefiting from it the most. It is also playing the market to ensure that the price remains high - they decreased production over the last month and while there is a permission by their regulator to pump more, they arre not using it.

        Will it improve? No. China still pays more than Europe and the Russians have just updated their icebreaker fleet. Their new LNG carriers are all icebreakers (albeit not very powerful ones) too. All of them will be sailing via the Arctic to China - with assistance from the Nuclear monsters like Arctica or 50 years of Victory where needed.

        And whom should be blame - the one who came up with this rancid regulatory sh*t which made this possible - Thatcher, Major and Blair.

        • Re:Good (partially). (Score:5, Informative)

          by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @02:25PM (#61848771) Homepage
          To elaborate a bit on why the idea of free market does not work with gas.

          Prospecting, developing and hooking up fields takes anything up to 10 years. Gas is not oil where you can use shuttle tankers and floating storage/production tankers. You have to run pipes to the wells and from the wells to the grid or to the LNG liquefaction plant.

          No company worldwide (even monsters and state monopolies like Gasprom and their Norwegian counterpart) will put money up-front unless they are sure of the price and the quantity. And they did not. There has been no new oceanic shelf gas projects since 2008 and there has been only a handful of new gas fields prospected and hooked up on solid ground. It is difficult to blame them - if you do not have any solid customers, you cannot source the money up front either internally or in the form of bonds and credits. And they did not.

          At the same time production on existing fields declined. So we have no new fields for which we can blame the "energy freedom" cretins as well as geniuses like Barrosso who applied the UK regulatory model continent-wide. We have declining production on existing fields and fields shutting down due to exhaustion (f.e. Netherlands). We have spiking demand in China and Asia. And all of that combines nicely into the perfect sh*tstorm. Not even sh*tstorm - sh*thurricane. But, let's be clear, if not for the ingenious idea of "gas infused with freedom molecules without long term contracts" we would not be here to start off with. It is what made the current situation possible.

        • First of all the ones who Putin has "by the Balls" get gas. At a discounted price - it is tied up to the price of oil. It is the ones that claimed to be free who are suffering.

          Yeah, and they've been talking about it for a long time [youtube.com].

    • by suss ( 158993 )

      Yeah, that's not going to happen with Die Grunen in power, though. Ignore the lignite power stations and the stripmining of entire areas, nuclear certainly is worse than this.

    • by Amouth ( 879122 )

      Never understood the backwards move Germany and Japan did from Nuclear to NG... i get Fukushima scared people, but if anything it showed how overbuilt these plants where.. Go ahead and do a proper risk review, but the wholesale backwards slide based on fear of the boogie man set the world back many decades....

      • Japan is not Germany. After a post-Fukushima safety review, iyt is putting its reactors back online one by one. It doesn't want to buy any more Russian gas than it has to.

      • by U0K ( 6195040 )
        People are easily scared, and political parties know that this can be exploited for their gain.

        Though this trend towards natural gas started a lot earlier. A large motivator was former German (crooked) Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who soon after no longer being in office (November 22nd 2005) became more and more involved in the Russian fossil fuel sector and is currently chairman of the Russian oil company Rosneft.


        As a technology, natural gas is actually fine enough in my opinion.

        The elephant i
    • Why do you think that another gas source is bad in this situation, ina world-wide shortage?
      • by U0K ( 6195040 )
        While it's true that it isn't the only gas source, it's also not just "another gas source", it's a major gas source. It's a gas source where if there are any tensions, will have far reaching disruptions.
        And the politician, ah sorry, that was redundant, actually believe that if Nord Stream 2 is completed, this will be better because of 'contracts'. As if contracts ever mattered in geopolitical tense situations.
        Either they think we people are idiots for not knowing how these things have worked out historica
        • But Russia needs the money that it makes with this gas. It can't afford to go to war.
          This was the idea behind the whole globalisation, touted a lot by the Americans in the 90s, and it is working. Yet by now everyone seems to have forgotten about that, in the US and I guess younger Germans don't know it either. Some people rather go back to cold wars and try to keep the other country weak. Well, not gonna deny that this strategy might be better in the long run.
          But the argument about the gas in a conflict i
  • by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @12:39PM (#61848367) Journal

    manufactured for price gouging.

    • by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @01:59PM (#61848683)

      I work in the oil and gas industry. People spout this nonsense ever time prices spike.

      Nobody is "manufacturing" shortages. The problem is that natural gas is difficult to store and demand can be quite volatile. New projects take years to come online. I'm currently working on a natural gas pipleline project that, if successful, would start operating around 2025-26 timeframe. Everyone on the project is amazed at the tight timeline. Add to that that we don't know what the price of natural gas will be with any remote level of confidence a year from now, let alone five. All that makes it very difficult to get investors who put money in, who also have bought into the "fossil fuels are dead" mantra.

      Even though I work in the industry, I will be the first to say that kicking fossil fuels to the curb would be a great thing for humanity, but the problem is we aren't there yet even if we pretend we are. One silver lining to high oil and gas prices is it makes cleaner alternatives more cost competitive.

      • Dude, there is a literal cartel controlling the price of oil by artificially limiting supply. Natural gas is a little more complex, but its not nearly as easy to substitute one supplier for another as gas being a commodity might suggest. And as with electricity, there is a whole lot of speculation going on on top of the very limited number of sources controlling the supply side. The reason nobody knows what gas and oil will cost in a year is precisely that the price is arbitrary and controlled at will, not

        • OPEC has very little impact on natural gas pricing. It's extremely regional (which is why U.S. prices are a fraction of other markets), and most OPEC countries (except for Qatar) don't have all that much gas export capacity. I suppose Russia is sort of the exception if you consider them as part of OPEC (they are part of OPEC+). Of course there is speculation, but there is speculation in every commodity market ever. That doesn't mean prices are being set in some smoke filled room.

          Even OPEC isn't really unite

        • Prices drop over decades [juliansimon.com], sans government manipulation, as free people work to satisfy demands.

          Short term spikes happen, but that's not the issue longer-term.

          This is another unpleasant short-term spike, and can be due to several factors, from multi-government cartels (OPEC) to Asia coming online more and more, to environmental laws causing higher costs and shortages.

          It seems intolerable, but capitalism, a corollary if freedom, will bring prices back down again. Assuming low government intervention.

        • Dude, there is a literal cartel controlling the price of oil by artificially limiting supply.

          Yes, but you give them way too much credit. There's actually quite limited levers they have as the wealth of their nations depends highly on them not screwing potential customers. Their artificial limit of supply is very similar to a government printing money, it's largely done in an attempt to maintain steady pricing and major fluctuations in world oil trade are often the result of them *not* agreeing on how to control market supply and any rash decision they make affect not only their direct customers doi

        • by jbengt ( 874751 )

          Dude, there is a literal cartel controlling the price of oil by artificially limiting supply.

          Well, they try.
          But they haven't been very successful in decades.
          And they've never had much to do with natural gas prices.
          And natural gas prices are the subject of TFA, not oil prices.

  • New heating and replacement heating in homes is almost always natural gas in colder climates. Now that everyone is hooked, there are shortages.

    Right now, I am glad to be 'stuck' with an oil furnace.
    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      The first hit is always free...

    • Crude has nearly doubled since last winter too. Your heating oil will be more expensive as well.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Natural gas IS cheap.

      North America still has a surplus of it which keeps prices extremely low.

      The only places it's spiking are places that don't have any - Europe is mostly starved of natural gas resources, so they've been sucking the teat of Russia for it for decades now.

      Natural Gas in North America was rising in the late 90s, but plummeted after fracking for oil was discovered to have released huge reserves of it. there were many plans to buy gas at a contracted rate, but most of those people got screwed

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MacMann ( 7518492 )

        Of course, a ground source heatpump (aka geothermal) is really the proper way to go...

        That's only true if your electricity is not coming from natural gas.

        We will need more nuclear power to reduce the need for natural gas for electricity, and then leave more available for heating.

        There's many reasons why heat pumps will not replace burning something for heat. One big one is that someone can have a tank of LPG to run a furnace and generator in case of a prolonged utility outage. If the tank starts to run low then a phone call to get more trucked out will solve that. What is the solution for

    • How about mandating new gas heating in new homes, but heat pumps instead? They are affordable in new build, and run off of a reasonable amount of electricity.

      Unfortunately they are only cost-competitive with gas in new builds. The cost of retrofitting a heat pump is far higher.

  • Starting to Spike? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @12:48PM (#61848399) Journal
    I've been looking at my gas bill all summer. The cost of a "therm" of natural gas has been double what it usually is since the spring. I suspect most people haven't noticed because it's been summer, and they haven't used much natural gas.

    This is going to be an expensive winter. I think I'm going to go buy some insulation for my house.
    • by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @12:50PM (#61848417) Journal
      Also, when I looked up why natural gas is so expensive, the cause commonly cited is the 2021 power crisis in Texas. [wikipedia.org] Apparently a lot of natural gas wells were damaged.
      • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @01:05PM (#61848475) Journal

        It's an inflexible market. The demand changes relatively quickly and unpredictably, whereas gas production takes a while to ramp up, and only has limited storage in case of over-production. In that kind of market, heavy volatility is a common feature.

        Imagine you are a gas producer, thinking of building a refinery. It's expensive, so if you build the refinery and no one uses it, you will be bankrupt. Generally you're not going to build the refinery unless you are certain it will be used. The same is true for pipelines, and to a lesser extent for natural gas wells.

        Since natural gas demand increased more than expected over the last 10 years (mainly burning it to generate electricity, where it is definitely cleaner than coal), it's a feature of the market that there will be giant price swings.

        • It's an inflexible market. The demand changes relatively quickly and unpredictably, whereas gas production takes a while to ramp up, and only has limited storage in case of over-production. In that kind of market, heavy volatility is a common feature.

          I don't know if I buy that. This report [eia.gov] from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows pretty predictable behavior, and what seems to be a lot of storage.

          My understanding is the US overproduces natural gas in spring through fall. The overproduction is stored, and consumed during the heating season. The heating season has a huge demand, which outstrips supply, but is very predictable.

          • My understanding is the US overproduces natural gas in spring through fall. The overproduction is stored, and consumed during the heating season.

            That seasonal aspect is indeed predictable.

            Here is a graph of usage over time, you can see that electrical usage has gone up [appropedia.org]. I can't find an easily presentable graph for world consumption, but in the last five years usage for electrical production has gone up quite a bit worldwide.

            Maybe also worth mentioning that the US seems to have produced enough natural gas for domestic usage, which is why some politicians are talking about preventing exports until spring.

            • Canada also produces lots of LNG, which keeps our own prices fairly stable.

              All of the same usual suspects protest increasing our exports, even if it is both good for the economy and good for the environment (by displacing the use of coal elsewhere).
        • It's an inflexible market. The demand changes relatively quickly and unpredictably, whereas gas production takes a while to ramp up, and only has limited storage in case of over-production.

          However, renewable energy production is of even less use in dealing with sudden shifts in demand, because the production itself is subject to extreme variability that is not under our control. If the wind dies -- as has been demonstrated recently in Great Britain -- not only is it impossible to just 'switch in' more wind turbines if they're all not generating, but the lead time for installing more turbines is orders of magnitudes greater than for obtaining more natural gas.

      • I think more Ida in the US at the moment. Systemically, it is all the LNG we are exporting and the uptick in the use of Nat Gas for electrical generation in the US. US Nat Gas production I believe is up again this year. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/0... [cnbc.com]
    • Haven't noticed, my rate's locked for 12 months as is standard for many in the south. Next April however is another story

  • by smap77 ( 1022907 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @12:59PM (#61848449)

    "...mean higher volatility is here to stay."

    Until, that is, enough of the infractructure is moved off this climate warming product to renewables (and others.) At which point, nobody will care about the price of natural gas.

    • Until, that is, enough of the infractructure is moved off this climate warming product to renewables (and others.) At which point, nobody will care about the price of natural gas.

      Even then, I'll still pay whatever it takes so I can still cook with gas.

      It's the only way to go if you really enjoy cooking.

      • Meh... Inside, a cast iron skillet can get way hotter than I'll ever need with electric. Outside, charcoal is better.

        • Meh... Inside, a cast iron skillet can get way hotter than I'll ever need with electric. Outside, charcoal is better.

          With gas stovetop, the control is more precise and instant...and that I have a great visual ability to watch the cooking (flame level, etc).

          There's a reason pretty much ALL professional kitchens cook on gas.

          Electric is ok for an oven, but gas is the way to go indoors on stovetop.

          I like my gas heating, gas water heater and gas dryer....much cheaper than electric in all the places I've ever

      • Have you tried induction? They seem to heat up the pan pretty fast, as long as it's ferrous.
        • Have you tried induction? They seem to heat up the pan pretty fast, as long as it's ferrous.

          Yes and not a fan.

          While I"m cooking more now with carbon steel pans...I still have a lot of SS cookware I use.

          I'll admit, it's been awhile since I last saw induction...I'm much more familiar with coil electric stove tops which I hate...but the induction stuff, not a fan.

          As I think I mentioned earlier, I like the visual control gas gives me too.

          Also, easier to do flambé with a gas stove than induction

        • It's second best after gas.

      • Heat is heat. Unless you are using the combustion products as a way to flavor your food (Mmm, BBQ), it doesn't matter where the heat comes from. Only how much, and how fast.

        • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          Only how much, and how fast.

          And somehow electric heating fails at this simple step. Resistive heating is slow to heat up or cool down. Induction only has 100% on and off, nothing in between.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      That moment when you don't realize that the only reason places with lots of renewables have a stable first world electric grid... is natgas and massive improvement in CCGT cycle to burn it in that came during last decade, so you actually have a backup system capable of taking the ridiculous grid stress caused by too much intermittent renewables.

    • Until, that is, enough of the infractructure is moved off this climate warming product to renewables (and others.) At which point, nobody will care about the price of natural gas.

      Ask the people of Great Britain how that's working for them, with their recent issues with the failure of wind production, which is what is causing their problems with gas prices -- gas power plants are being tasked with making up the shortfall from a lack of wind production, and with the British government doubling down on wind and solar generation as the be-all and end-all solution, they came up short on gas supplies when wind production fell on its face. Adding more wind turbines isn't going to help when

      • by smap77 ( 1022907 )

        Didja read about the complaint for Tesla's big battery? It's about as troll as you on this issue.
        https://reneweconomy.com.au/re... [reneweconomy.com.au]

        As I read it, the complaint isn't about battery backup in the case of source X diminishing output, it's about contingency frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) that allegedly didn't respond as quickly as they wanted when an entire Coal plant unexpected tripped offline. Moreover, I'll quote from that article, "“Many (coal and gas) generators either no longer automati

  • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @01:03PM (#61848467) Homepage Journal

    For the sake of cost efficiency, many heat pumps with gas backup are configured to switch over based on outside temperature well before the heat pump becomes ineffective. If gas is going to be a lot more expensive, that switchover point probably needs to be set lower. Download the needed configuration manuals now.

  • Expect this to make solar accelerate even faster than it did before. Pretty soon we will add around 10% of the current global power generation in solar every year.

    • Sadly, most solar panels are made in China. Production of the high quality silicon required for solar panels is also a very high energy process, so we are set for some big supply problems there. Most of my suppliers in China have informed me, over the last week, they are limited to 3-4 days of power per week. In some cases, factories are limited to even just 1-2 days, depending on region. This is a going to be an unprecedented shock to the supply chain for everything coming from China.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Solar and wind are nonstarters without spinning and cold reserve sufficient to cover for their intermittency. Primary backup where geography doesn't allow for massive hydro storage is... CCGTs.

      So this is going to do the exact opposite if it actually persists. It will render intermittent renewables nonviable.

  • GOOD! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @01:18PM (#61848551)

    The higher the cost of fossil fuels, the more investment we'll see in renewables.

    • Also more people switching their home heat to electric heat pump systems.

    • Re:GOOD! (Score:5, Informative)

      by nagora ( 177841 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @02:43PM (#61848841)

      The higher the cost of fossil fuels, the more investment we'll see in renewables.

      One reason that gas prices are very high in the UK is that our renewables (wind and solar) have only managed to produce 10% of their maximum capacity for most of the year. Looking out the window at the moment I suspect that's about to change but without storage renewables are not good enough yet.

      • Without storage, wind and solar do nothing to reduce the requirement for peak capacity by other production means. Here in the Pacific Northwest, wind and solar in concert with hydroelectric looks like a good combination. Have you looked at investing more in tidal generation in the UK?
      • Naturally, storage is needed for intermittent energy sources. We have also invented batteries that have dropped so insanely in price that it's affordable to actually use them for mass storage. There are other forms of energy storage like gravity based "batteries" as well. It's all a matter of someone actually investing in making it.

      • n the UK is that our renewables (wind and solar) have only managed to produce 10% of their maximum capacity for most of the year.

        Ouch, that's a really low percentage.

  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Thursday September 30, 2021 @03:27PM (#61849009) Journal
    He and the goon squad are trying to 'keep the O&G in the ground'. dumbest idea going. Lots of profits to be made now by O&G companies and nations like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc.
  • Lots of folks that don't have city gas use propane delivered by truck instead.
    Propane prices are up +192% for the year while nat. gas is (only) +139%
    I wasn't able to find any data for prices of propane accessories.

  • This whole thing would've happened a year - year and a half ago, if it wasn't for Covid.
    Years of printing money allowed us to "avoid" an economic crisis. Well we avoided a classic one only to get a new type of crisis.
    We've literally out grown our energy sources. The excessive amount of printed money allowed many businesses to buy equipment only to face sky high gas and electricity prices a year or two later. The culling will happen, only this time it will be for lack of energy, not for lack of money.
    It

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