Customs data shows German gas import costs rose much higher than Japan during last summer’s spot price spikes.
German had to buy lots of spot gas, whereas Japan had more long-term deals.
The ICIS TTF spot gas benchmark for European gas soared higher last year after Russian gas flows to Europe fell and the region had to buy more spot LNG.
This pulled German gas prices higher, as Germany bought more spot gas to replace lost volumes from Russian.
German prices didn’t rise as high as the TTF overall, though, because there would still have been some long-term contract gas coming in, such as on contracts from Norway.
Germany’s long-term contracts are usually indexed to spot gas markets, but with a time-lag of up to two years, so long-term imports aren’t as high as today’s spot gas price (yet).
Japan still has mainly oil-indexed long-term import contracts. Although its import costs have been rising, they have not picked up as much as Germany.
Source: Alex Froley, ICIS
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