Spot charter rates for the global LNG carrier fleet in the Atlantic are now below $100,000 per day as they continue their downward trend since October last year.
In October, both the Atlantic and Pacific rates for 160,000-cbm TFDE carriers climbed above $400,000/day, with the Atlantic rate reaching more than $480,000/day.
However, the rates began sliding in the second half of November and were below $200,000 per day on December 9.
“LNG freight spot rates continue to move sharply lower, with the Atlantic Spark30S now falling below $100,000/day, and down over $50,000 in the last 2 weeks,” Spark Commodities said on Thursday.
The Atlantic spot LNG freight rate reached $96,750 per day on Thursday.
Spark previously said that the ongoing Freeport restart delays was one of the main reasons for the drop in the Atlantic rate.
Last month, the operator of the 15 mtpa Freeport LNG export terminal on Quintana Island again delayed the restart of the facility in Texas.
Freeport LNG is still targeting initial production at the facility by the end of this month despite several recent reports claiming that this would be probably moved to February.
Prior to the shutdown on June 8, most of the cargoes produced at the Freeport plant this year landed in Europe.
This is the case with other US LNG terminals as well as European countries import record volumes of LNG in order to replace Russian gas pipeline supplies.
As per prices in Europe and Asia, the Dutch TTF for February settled at $21.214 per MMBtu on Thursday while the JKM settled at $26.760 per MMBtu.
