The prices of natural gas at the key regional hubs in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Western Canada have hit this year the lowest level on record, amid rising production in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) and high inventory levels in these regions.
Monthly average natural gas spot prices at the northwestern U.S. and western Canada border pricing hubs reached historic lows in the first ten months of 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday, citing data from Natural Gas Intelligence.
The Western Canada benchmark, Westcoast Station 2, saw the daily spot natural gas price average $1.04 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) through October, with the lowest monthly average of $0.31 per MMBtu in September.
The Westcoast Station 2 pricing hub is near Fort St. John, British Columbia, close to natural gas production activities in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.
At the key pricing hub for the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Northwest Sumas, the daily spot price averaged $1.87 per MMBtu in 2024 through October and reached its lowest monthly average this year of $0.97 per MMBtu in May. The monthly average price at Northwest Sumas for the first 10 months of this year was the lowest for this period of any year since the EIA began collecting data for this hub in 1998.
As Charles Kennedy writes at OilPrice.com, the key reasons for the low regional gas prices were the high natural gas production in the WCSB since the end of 2022 and relatively high natural gas exports into the western United States.
To compare, the monthly average of the U.S. benchmark, Henry Hub, daily spot price was at $2.20 per MMBtu in October 2024, the EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) showed earlier this month.
The U.S. administration expects the Henry Hub price to average around $2.90 per MMBtu in 2025, as global demand for U.S. LNG exports, a component of U.S. natural gas demand, continues to increase.
