Natural Gas Across Country Borders: An Introduction and Overview

In the last several years, market forces and institutions have transformed international natural gas markets in fundamental ways. Natural gas today is relatively easy to transport over water, and an increasing volume of purchases flow through the spot market. As trade grows, regional prices start to move with each other. Although one does not need formal modeling to describe these new developments, it is also evident that the modeling process improves our basic understanding of how these trends reshape the natural gas outlook.