21st Century natural gas executives draw two diverging lines on the whiteboard in strategic meetings. The line on bottom is shallow and the one on top rises steeply. They’re forward supply & demand of natural gas. The yawning gap between them is the shoulders that the LNG push is standing on.

This graph is paired with the ubiquitous and equally unreliable forward price curve. “Everybody’s got one,” a risk VP said to me. “None are any good.” They’re less good now.

Commodities received gold rush valuations from price being squeezed by a charge of institutional money throwing itself at it under the guidance of many dubious models, absent important variables (i.e. systemic liquidity risk event, demand contraction).

The supply side was insistent that current world demand was not only accurate but understated and would grow like a weed perpetually under shrinking fossil fuel supply and the long interval for next gen renewable resources being deployed worldwide.

Did the western lenders use the forward price curve to value Russia’s fossil fuel reserves when they lent to them?

Globalization 2.0 = who is your counterparty?