Commodities
Traders Pay $200,000 a Day to Ship Gas as Tankers Become Scarce Ahead of Winter
- More vessels are being used as floating storage before winter
- Traders bet that LNG prices will rise with colder weather
An LNG tanker at a terminal in Karachi, Pakistan.
Photographer: Asim Hafeez/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Traders are poised to shell out more than $200,000 a day to ship liquefied natural gas in the coming months as tankers grow scarce ahead of winter, when demand for the heating fuel peaks.
Charter rates surged to $284,750 for November and $206,750 for October, more than doubling from current levels, according to data from Spark Commodities. If those prices hold, they risk repeating last year’s rally, when the global LNG market was rushing to replace Russian supply after the invasion of Ukraine.