LNG Price Today: Live Chart & Price History

Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas cooled into a liquid so it can be shipped overseas in specialized tankers. There is no single "LNG price" that applies everywhere. What you pay or receive depends on where the cargo is loaded, where it is delivered, and whether it is sold under a long term contract or on the spot market. This page uses figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which tracks what American exporters and importers actually report.

The numbers here are monthly averages published with a delay, so they describe a completed month and not today's market. Each row carries its own month or date, and the live market will have moved since.

EIA reports the average price of U.S. LNG exports in dollars per thousand cubic feet, written Mcf. That is a volume unit for gas. The latest month available is $8.29/mcf, and earlier months give some context for how much the figure moves.

An export price is what the seller received, not what a buyer abroad ultimately paid. Shipping, regasification and local charges are added after the cargo leaves the U.S., so landed prices in Europe or Asia are usually higher.

The United States still imports small amounts of LNG, mostly into a few coastal terminals. EIA publishes that price on the same basis, and it can differ noticeably from the export price in the same period because it reflects different cargoes, contracts and locations.

Henry Hub is the pipeline hub in Louisiana whose spot price is the main benchmark for U.S. natural gas. It is quoted in dollars per million British thermal units, written MMBtu, which measures energy content instead of volume. The two units are close but not identical, so a price per Mcf and a price per MMBtu should not be compared directly without converting.

Henry Hub is a domestic gas price. LNG export prices are normally higher, because liquefying, loading and shipping gas costs money that a pipeline sale does not include. Exporters generally price cargoes off international benchmarks as well as Henry Hub, which is why the export figure above does not simply track the table below.

The last two rows are forecasts from EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook, a monthly publication. They are official projections, not guarantees, and EIA revises them with each release. Check the current edition at eia.gov.

LNG prices are shaped by several factors at once:

• Natural gas supply and storage levels in the U.S., which set the starting cost of the gas.
• Demand in Europe and Asia, which varies with weather and with power sector needs.
• Shipping availability and the distance between loading and delivery ports.
• Terminal capacity, since liquefaction and regasification plants can limit how much gas moves.
• Contract structure, because long term contracts are often indexed differently from spot cargoes.

If you compare this page with a news site, you may see very different numbers. Some sources quote Asian or European benchmark prices, others quote U.S. export averages, and others quote futures. These measure different things at different points in the supply chain, so a mismatch does not mean either figure is wrong. Always check the unit, the location and the date.