Edmund Conway of the Economics.com website in the United Kingdom wrote that the story of Britain's up and down summer for natural gas began a few kilo-meters off the Teeside coast in the UK on a damp and windy June day in 2007. It is the wettest summer in English history and the ships lining up to dock didn’t know that there was a major accident about to happen.
The storm got worse as the day went on, eventually building to Force 8 hurricane strength, and one of the oil tankers, Young Lady, dropped its anchor to steady its position. As the metal chain reels down and the anchor drops the 30meters down to the sea bed, no one on board realizes that something is about to happen that will send major shockwaves through the gas markets, instantly shooting prices dramatically higher.
With the wind and waves buffeting it, the ship is pushed and pulled backwards and forwards and the chain drags along the seabed. It might have been bad luck; it could be called a miserable foul-up, but moments later the anchor struck and broke into one of the biggest pipelines taking natural gas into the United Kingdom from the North Sea.
In just a little bit of time it became clear that the Central Area Transmission System (Cats) of the United Kingdom, England in particular was damaged, the pipeline, which provides around 8 percent (8%) of Great Britain's gas demand, was shut down.
Natural Gas Prices shot up instantly, nearly doubling in price. The natural gas market, which was serenely sailing on boring low prices, thinking that the days of record high prices was gone, was back climbing back the profit tree.
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