The amount of natural gas that gets produced, and the amount that actually gets traded (bought and sold) are two different numbers. Don’t try to figure out–just accept it on faith. The companies that buy and sell (i.e. trade) natural gas are required to file “Form 552” with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) once each year, to inform FERC of the volume of gas they’ve traded. Form 552 says right on it that its purpose is: “FERC Form No. 552 collects transactional information from natural gas market participants. The filing of this information is necessary to provide information regarding physical natural gas transactions that use an index and transactions that contribute to, or may contribute to gas price indices.” Cornerstone Research, an economic and financial consulting company, does a yearly deep dive into all of those Form 552 filings, producing a report of their findings (full copy of the report below). What did Cornerstone find from the 552 filings for 2015? The big news is that the volume of gas traded in 2015 went up 4% over 2014. It’s big news because the the volume of gas traded has gone down each year since 2011. Here’s what else they found…
The amount of natural gas that gets produced, and the amount that actually gets traded (bought and sold) are two different numbers. Don’t try to figure out–just accept it on faith. The companies that buy and sell (i.e. trade) natural gas are required to file “Form 552” with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) once each year, to inform FERC of the volume of gas they’ve traded. Form 552 says right on it that its purpose is: “FERC Form No. 552 collects transactional information from natural gas market participants. The filing of this information is necessary to provide information regarding physical natural gas transactions that use an index and transactions that contribute to, or may contribute to gas price indices.” Cornerstone Research, an economic and financial consulting company, does a yearly deep dive into all of those Form 552 filings, producing a report of their findings (full copy of the report below). What did Cornerstone find from the 552 filings for 2015? The big news is that the volume of gas traded in 2015 went up 4% over 2014. It’s big news because the the volume of gas traded has gone down each year since 2011. Here’s what else they found…