Ferc urged to prop up illiquid natural gas indexes

A lack of willing price reporters is eroding confidence in key benchmarks

An index is only as good as the data that goes into it. By that measure, the North American natural gas market indexes – which are used to price nearly 80% of physical supply contracts – could be on their way to irrelevance.

In 2016, only 43.4% of eligible daily fixed-price natural gas volumes were reported to index publishers like Platts and NGI, compared with 47.6% in the prior year. In the monthly market, reported volumes fell from 53.2% in 2015 to 46%, according to a Platts analysis of data