It's not just the current prices,* it's the fact there will not be enough natural gas to store for the northern hemisphere heating season - except maybe for Britain whose shrunken storage capacity is filled to the brim. And Norway. And Russia who will probably establish a chain of sauna's up and down that long border, just to tempt, tease and torment the Finns.
From Yahoo Australia, who also have a lot of gas, Bloomberg, May 23:
The liquefied natural gas market is hurtling toward a potentially
historic shortage this winter as the world rushes to secure the
super-chilled fuel.
Europe’s plan to cut imports of piped Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of the year and replace it with LNG from the US and Africa is sharply intensifying competition for the power-plant and heating fuel. There’s also an expectation that China’s battle with Covid-19 will be winding down later in 2022, which should stoke industrial demand from Asia’s biggest economy.
In a normal year, LNG importers stock up on supplies for the peak winter season over the summer. That appears to have started earlier this year, with South Korean and Japanese utilities already snatching up shipments for delivery through early 2023. The looming supply crunch risks pushing up electricity bills and inflation and could see poorer nations miss out entirely.
“This coming winter has everyone on edge,” said James Whistler, the global head of energy derivatives at Simpson Spence Young. “All things point to tight supply under normal conditions, but additional risks are also present.”
How to cope with the widening gap between supply and demand will be the hot topic at the World Gas Conference in South Korea this week. It’s the first major gathering of the industry in Asia since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended the LNG trade and sent prices surging.
Global demand will hit 436 million tons in 2022, outpacing 410 million tons of available supply, Rystad Energy said in a note this month. Although soaring consumption has spurred the greatest rush of new projects worldwide in more than a decade, most new supply will only come online after 2024, it said....
....MUCH MORE
*All Is Proceeding According To Plan: U.S. Natural Gas Futures Break Through $9.00
Fortunately, should sweaters become a necessity we have historical precedent on the various means to profit along various links in the supply chain:
- "Maken Engelond Gret Ayeyn"
- "The World’s Most Valuable Wool – Astino" (plus premium facemasks—coronavirus chic)
- Bard Finance, LLC: Dirty Deeds in the Wool Trade
- "Australia’s Lesser Known Commodities Booms"
- New Zealand Farmers Plan Wool Cartel
- "How reliable is a millennium of macroeconomic data?"
- British Imports and Exports Pre-EU
- Disney and Carnegie-Mellon University Develop a 3D Printer That Prints With Yarn
- Slovak President Sports a Stylish Ensemble: Boatneck Dress with Matching Pumps and Fabric Mask
- "Canicule, fraîcheurs, vendanges (France, XVe–XIXe siècles)" Dog-days, cold periods, grape-harvests (France, 15-19th centuries)
You may also want to dip into the big daddy of price series:
"A History Of Agriculture And Prices In England, From The Year After The Oxford Parliament (1259) To The Commencement Of The Continental War (1793)"
by J. E. Thorold‐Rogers, 7 volumes, 1866-1887 which probably influenced Jevons.
It appears most of the upstream plays involve sheep.
And being something of a neo-Luddite the midstream with the looms and the other textile machinery doesn't entice.
So perhaps wholesale and retail are beckoning Marketing and market differentiation.
Is there a demand for yak wool?
The Strange Business of Subsidized Yak Insurance
I'm not sure if the world is ready for our "Tips on Trading the Insulation Complex".
It resembles what we found in "Stimulus: Tips on Trading the Caulk/Putty/Grout Complex".
