Asian LNG prices are rising at 20% per day and hit $22.50 overnight.
Locally, gas prices are falling, apparently owing to unusually weak NEM demand.
The fuel mix suggests weak demand owing to good weather and even weaker gas usage.
This is great timing, but Australia’s worst minister, the Mad King, is already encouraging the gas export cartel on the East Coast to bring home the Iran price shock.
“In the last week (wholesale spot prices) have dropped a little but and that is due to the good supply that is not connected to the dispute in the Middle East at all. And it is very different settings to what we saw when the Russian gas went out of the system in 2022.
“I wouldn’t want to say prices wont be affected but at the moment it is holding steady.”
Ms King could not guarantee gas prices would remain stable if the Middle East conflict was protracted.
The settings are absolutely no different from the Ukraine War. In fact, they are eerily similar. There’s an international gas supply shock coming; there’s a complacent government. It’s approximately the same time of year, and if Mad King doesn’t take action, which she is currently preparing not to do, the cartel will immediately raise local prices.
- Oil and gas traders have spent days scrambling for alternative sources of supply to Asia outside of the Middle East on concerns a prolonged conflict could choke off flows from the energy-rich region.
- Importers in China, India and Japan have all inquired about other sources of oil and LNG after Iranian attacks closed the world’s biggest export plant in Qatar.
What is wrong with this woman that she can’t say, “I can guarantee that there will be no repeat of the war profiteering that hit Australians during the Ukraine War. I have already issued a warning to the LNG exporters, cautioning them not to bring these prices home. I will activate the ADGSM immediately if they even threaten to do so.”
The shock is not in question. Goldman describes how, to raise the possibility that NW European gas storage will reach at least 80% full this summer, TTF will rise far into the gas-to-oil (G2O) switching range, which is now between 45 and 71 EUR/MWh.
As a result, the bank’s TTF projection for April is 36 EUR/MWh to 55 EUR/MWh ($19/mmBtu), above futures at 43 EUR/MWh. From 36 EUR/MWh, our average 2Q26 TTF projection is 45 EUR/MWh.
Goldman’s JKM projection has also been raised to $20/mmBtu (up from $11.90), which now incorporates a positive premium to TTF to assist Asia in luring enough Atlantic basic cargoes to offset Qatar’s supply.
This is an AUD local gas price peak of roughly $30Gj, 350% higher than today.
If the war is prolonged and the Mad King allows it, your electricity bill will skyrocket by approximately 85%, interest rates will have no ceiling, and your house price will crash (a silver lining).
I humbly suggest that Australians should burn down their government rather than allow this energy catastrophe to happen again.
