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Gas is not a global market like oil. Gas is traded internationally only in two ways: one is if you have a direct pipeline, e.g. from Russia to Europe. That's a

Gas is not a global market like oil. Gas is traded internationally only in two ways: one is if you have a direct pipeline, e.g. from Russia to Europe. That's a very localized market. The only real global market is liquified natural gas, transported by those ships with giant spherical tanks, requiring specialized terminals on both ends. That's way more expensive than pipelines. The US exports a fair amount of LNG, especially right now to Europe, but for its domestic gas it pays far lower prices than LNG, and significantly less than most countries with less abundant gas resources. I wish we would move from gas to nuclear since gas has a major climate impact, but low US gas prices do make that more difficult. The US also happens to be especially well situated for solar and wind, making life even harder for nuclear. That comes with some bad news too, because we don't really have great storage solutions yet and we're terrible at building long-distance transmission.

idiotsecant 4y ago
It's not as clean as you describe - natural gas is certainly a global market, as demonstrated by the price correlations: futures in the united states are typically based on the henry hub price, as determined by the price at the henry hub located in Erath, Louisiana. If we compare this to rates found at, for example, the UK national balancing point, we will find that there is a definite correlation. The international trade in natural gas is definitely non-trivial. Grandparent post is making the claim that gas is traded internationally and north Americans are generally not insulated from global prices. This is demonstrably true. https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-NBP-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5351150&span=2 https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-NBP-Natural-Gas-Futur... https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_price https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_pr...
- DennisP 4y ago
  Sure, I'm not saying they're completely separate. If demand for LNG increases a lot (as happened recently) then some US gas is going to go that way. But a country like Japan, subsisting on imported LNG, is still paying way more for its gas than domestic consumers in the US, and that's the point that matters if we're discussing nuclear's market challenges in Japan vs. the US.

idiotsecant 4y ago

It's not as clean as you describe - natural gas is certainly a global market, as demonstrated by the price correlations: futures in the united states are typically based on the henry hub price, as determined by the price at the henry hub located in Erath, Louisiana. If we compare this to rates found at, for example, the UK national balancing point, we will find that there is a definite correlation. The international trade in natural gas is definitely non-trivial. Grandparent post is making the claim that gas is traded internationally and north Americans are generally not insulated from global prices. This is demonstrably true. https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-NBP-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5351150&span=2 https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-NBP-Natural-Gas-Futur... https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_price https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_pr...

DennisP 4y ago
Sure, I'm not saying they're completely separate. If demand for LNG increases a lot (as happened recently) then some US gas is going to go that way. But a country like Japan, subsisting on imported LNG, is still paying way more for its gas than domestic consumers in the US, and that's the point that matters if we're discussing nuclear's market challenges in Japan vs. the US.