The physical North American natural gas market has significantly changed in the past several years due to dramatic increases in Northeast gas production, reversal of flow of existing pipelines, new pipeline projects, and increasing sources of demand such as power generation, LNG exports, and exports to Mexico.
As a means of reflecting these dramatic shifts and its resulting regional volatility, on October 29, S&P Global Platts, in partnership with Intercontinental Exchange, launched the Gas Indices America, or GIA, a suite of four regional prices, and a national average published daily.
This suite of natural gas indices represent a unique collaboration between pricing and analytics data, where Platts Analytics pipeline nomination data is used to determine the basket of 20 trading locations across four regions, and is also used to determine how to weight locational and regional prices. The utilization of analytics, and seasonal adjusting allow for GIA to adjust with these changes in the North American natural gas market.
Ryan Ouwerkerk, Manager, Americas Natural Gas Pricing, and Mark Callahan, Editorial Director, Americas Generating Fuels and Power Pricing, explain the GIA.