Asian spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices continued to rise this week amid stronger demand on the back of a blistering heatwave in Japan and a return of competition with Europe which is gearing up for possible disruption of Russian gas. The average LNG price for August delivery into north-east Asia was estimated at $39 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), up $2 or 5.4% from the previous week, industry sources said. “Demand from Japan on the back of a heatwave was evident as some utilities purchased prompt cargoes this week,” said Ciaran Roe, global director of LNG at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “In addition, as concerns around the length of the Freeport LNG outage mounted, the JKM (Japan Korea […]