Platts: Will LNG prices in Asia continue to be oil-linked?

The simple answer to that question is that there is no simple answer.

Historically, LNG prices were linked to oil because LNG was displacing oil and that practice continued until US LNG export projects were proposed. Buyers from the US export projects will get LNG based on Henry Hub gas prices because in most cases they will be responsible for buying US gas and transporting it by pipeline to their contracted export projects to be liquefied.

That access to those Henry Hub-priced supplies has spurred buyers to seek gas-indexed prices in their new purchase contracts, displacing traditional oil-indexed prices.

A number of buyers, especially in Japan, are pushing proposed British Columbia export projects to use the US benchmark Henry Hub gas price as the index for LNG.

“The aim is to link 100% to Henry Hub prices, rather than JCC [Japan Customs Cleared] as has been the custom globally,” Hiroshi Hashimoto, a senior gas analyst with the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan said on the sideline of the CERI 2014 Natural Gas Conference this week in Calgary. “But there will be some options offered to Canadian and US producers of linking 20% of that price to crude oil and the remaining 80% being still linked to gas.” MORE

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