Natural gas cooled to -162°C to become a liquid for storage and transport, enabling global trade of energy that cannot travel via pipeline.
Also known as: LNG, LNG Export, LNG Arbitrage
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is natural gas — primarily methane — that has been cooled to approximately -162°C (-260°F), at which point it becomes a liquid and its volume shrinks to about 1/600th of its gaseous form. This dramatic compression makes it economically feasible to transport natural gas by specialized tanker ships across oceans and continents where pipelines do not exist.
LNG enables global energy trade in a way that pipeline gas cannot: a shipment of US gas produced in Louisiana can be liquefied at an export terminal, loaded onto a tanker, shipped across the Atlantic, and regasified at a European terminal for delivery to German industrial customers. This flexibility makes LNG prices a critical variable in global energy markets.
The LNG supply chain has four distinct stages: production (natural gas extracted from wells), liquefaction (gas compressed and cooled at an export terminal), shipping (transport in cryogenic LNG tankers), and regasification (LNG converted back to gas at an import terminal for pipeline distribution).
The economics of LNG trade are driven by the price spread between the source market and the destination market minus the cost of liquefaction, shipping, and regasification. The most important LNG arbitrage in global energy markets is between Henry Hub (the US benchmark) and TTF (the European benchmark). When TTF prices significantly exceed Henry Hub prices plus transportation costs, US LNG exports become highly profitable and export facilities run near full capacity.
In 2026, US LNG export capacity reached approximately 18 billion cubic feet per day — making the United States the world's largest LNG exporter — driven by expanded capacity at facilities in Louisiana, Texas, and Maryland.
LNG pricing creates a direct transmission mechanism between geopolitical events in one region and energy costs in another. When Hormuz Strait shipping lanes are disrupted (affecting Middle Eastern LNG from Qatar, historically the world's largest exporter), European buyers immediately bid up LNG spot prices, which widens the Henry Hub-TTF spread and pulls more US export capacity into the market. Energy buyers, procurement teams, and commodity traders monitor LNG spreads in real time to make hedging and purchasing decisions.
LNG price volatility has direct business impact: manufacturing companies with large energy budgets use LNG price forecasts for capex planning, utilities use LNG spot prices to decide between gas-fired and alternative generation, and energy trading desks use LNG arbitrage spreads to identify profitable export windows.
Energy Volatility API provides real-time and historical data on Henry Hub natural gas prices, European TTF and NBP gas hub prices, US LNG export terminal utilization rates, and LNG shipping rate indices. This enables developers to build LNG arbitrage trackers, energy cost forecasting tools, and procurement hedging dashboards without managing multiple data vendor relationships.