Liquified Natural Gas prices have been soaring across the world as shipments of LNG have been diverted to Europe, thanks to Europeans outbidding other customers in their desperation to fill their gas storge sites before winter.
Today the EU agreed that all 27 member states volunteer to cut their gas consumption by 15%. This becomes mandatory if at least five states issue an emergency alert (with exceptions for Spain and Portugal who are not connected to the EU gas grid).
Why is this huge? Well the EU is 450 million people - that many people cutting down on consumption will affect global gas price.
Italy has already passed a law forcing people to set their air conditioning no lower than 25 celsius.
France has just issued a decree asking air conditioned shops to keep their doors closed to conserve power. Apparently these shops had their doors open, letting the cold air escape. Crazy! And crazy they needed the govt to tell them not to be so stupid - everywhere else has automatic doors that close after you have entered.
In the next six months we are going to see a lot of these inefficiencies exposed and corrected.
The end result should be global natural gas prices coming down.
There is a lot of energy wastage, so maybe this is a good thing.