North Asian LNG prices hit a three year low yesterday at $11mmBtu:
The price of liquefied natural gas in Asia has plunged by nearly half over the past five months — to the lowest level in more than three years — as Japan and South Korea have slowed fresh purchases and supply has risen.
South Korea has been hoarding gas since last winter, when its nuclear power plants went offline after a safety scandal. Now those plants are restarting and state-run importer Korea Gas Corp, or Kogas, is running down stock levels because it overbought.
An unusually steady supply from producers in Qatar, Australia and Southeast Asia, which haven’t seen the usual rate of production outages, has also weighed on prices. Papua New Guinea, too, has been adding to supply after its new plant started production in May, ahead of schedule.
Here’s the chart from BG (I’ve added the red line)
