U.S. natural gas futures prices declined on Tuesday on market talk that U.S. liquefied natural gas company Freeport LNG’s export plant in Texas is shut.
Officials at Freeport declined to comment.
Freeport is one of the most closely watched LNG export plants in the world because the start and stop of its operations often cause price swings in global gas markets.
When flows to Freeport drop, gas prices in the U.S. usually decline due to the export plant’s lower demand for the fuel, while prices in Europe usually increase due to a drop in LNG supplies available to global markets from the plant.
U.S. gas prices fell about 3% on Tuesday.
Before the rumored outage, the amount of gas flowing to Freeport was on track to hit 2.0 bcfd on Tuesday, the same as the average over the past seven days, according to data from financial firm LSEG.
The three liquefaction trains at Freeport are capable of turning about 2.1 bcfd of gas into LNG.
One billion cubic feet of gas is enough to supply about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York, Liz Hampton in Denver and Curtis Williams and Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Leslie Adler and Nia Williams)