Data • global gas flows
The world gas system, read at its joints
The methane board read one country's gas system through its four entry points. This is the same idea at world scale: global liquefaction and regasification capacity by region[1], the bilateral trade matrix of who ships to whom[3], and the maritime chokepoints every LNG cargo must pass. The system is strikingly asymmetric, 1,190 Mtpa of import capacity against 496 of export, so the binding constraint is almost always the supply side and the straits it sails through. Close one below and watch what strands.
How to read this page: ● measured sourced data · ◐ inferred analyst reading, basis linked · ○ projected anchored to a real starting point. Bracketed citations link to the sources at the foot of the page.
Close a chokepoint
The global scenario board: LNG that strands versus LNG that reroutes. ● measured inputs, ○ projected outputs
Real 2024 trade between the six largest export and import regions, ribbon width proportional to value[3]. ■ LNG · ■ pipeline. Each ribbon bends through only the straits it actually transits, so Middle East flows thread Hormuz while Australia and the Russian pipelines cross direct. Tap a chokepoint to close it: the corridors that pass it turn red, and the volume arithmetic below uses the EIA per-strait throughput. The Danish Straits (the Baltic gate shared with the Finnish board) is in the list below, not the map, since it is not separable at region scale.
The straits
The system's answer ○ projected
All joints open. Global LNG trade runs at about 54 Bcf/d (400 Mtpa). Close a strait to see how much of that flow strands with no alternative versus how much simply takes a longer route.
Hormuz is the one that matters Close it alone and about 19 percent of world LNG strands, because Qatar and the UAE sit inside the Gulf with no pipeline or seaway out[6]. Every other strait on the list has a longer way round; Hormuz does not.
What this board is not: it prices nothing, models no demand response, and does not re-solve the whole network, it applies one cited reroute rule per strait. It is the global sibling of the Finnish gas board, same contract: dependent data joins at measured bottlenecks. Chokepoint LNG volumes are the EIA quarterly range's recent representative value.
Where the capacity sits
Operating liquefaction and regasification by region, Mtpa. ● measured
Export capacity is concentrated, import capacity is spread. The United States, Australia, Qatar and Russia hold most of the world's liquefaction; East Asia alone holds more regasification than any exporting region has liquefaction[1]. That asymmetry is why gas security is a supply-and-transit problem, not a terminal problem: importers built more than enough regas, so the pinch point moved upstream to the liquefaction plants and the straits.
The biggest corridors
Region-to-region gas trade, 2024, ranked by value. ● measured
Top trade corridors (bn USD, 2024)
| Oceania to East Asia | 42.5 | LNG |
| Russia & Caspian to East Asia | 29.6 | pipe |
| Middle East to East Asia | 26.4 | LNG |
| South & SE Asia to East Asia | 23.2 | LNG |
| Africa to Europe | 21.2 | pipe |
| Russia & Caspian to Europe | 20.9 | pipe |
| North America to Europe | 20.5 | LNG |
| North America to East Asia | 9.1 | LNG |
| Middle East to South & SE Asia | 8.9 | LNG |
| Africa to South & SE Asia | 4.9 | LNG |
| North America to South & SE Asia | 3.8 | LNG |
| Africa to East Asia | 3.7 | LNG |
Built from UN Comtrade with importer mirrors for the non-reporting exporters[3]. Values, not volumes; a directional map of the trade, not a customs audit.
Biggest cross-border pipeline corridors (bcm/y capacity)
| Russia & Caspian to East Asia | 56 |
| Russia & Caspian to Europe | 55 |
| Africa to Europe | 54 |
| Russia & Caspian to Middle East | 31 |
| Middle East to Europe | 14 |
| Middle East to Russia & Caspian | 6 |
| Europe to Russia & Caspian | 1 |
Operating cross-border pipeline capacity, GEM tracker, summed to region pairs[2]. Capacity, not throughput: several Russia-to-Europe lines still show capacity that no longer flows.
Does it reproduce what happened
The three recent disruptions the board must match to earn trust. ● measured against ◐ inferred
Russia to Europe pipeline collapse, 2022
Cutting the Russia to Europe corridor strands the largest single pipeline flow in the matrix and forces Europe onto LNG. The measured aftermath: European regas imports surged and the continent's LNG import capacity was expanded fastest of any region, which the capacity snapshot still shows as a wave of 2022-2025 European terminals.[3,1]
Red Sea diversions, 2024
Closing Bab el-Mandeb reroutes Gulf-to-Europe LNG around the Cape. The EIA series shows exactly this: Red Sea LNG fell to near zero in 2024 while Cape of Good Hope volume rose, the reroute made visible in the data rather than assumed.[5,10]
Panama drought restrictions, 2023-24
Restricting Panama pushes US Gulf LNG to Asia onto longer Cape and Suez routes. The canal's LNG throughput duly collapsed to a fraction of its earlier level and has not recovered, which is why the board treats it as already near-closed.[5]
The same discipline as the Finnish board: a simulator that reproduces the disruptions already in its data earns the right to speak about the next one. The Red Sea case is the cleanest, the reroute to the Cape is visible in the EIA series and in this site's own chokepoint monitor[10]. ◐ inferred
Sources and method (10)
- [1] Global Energy Monitor, Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker, LNG terminals (Sep 2025 release), CC BY 4.0: per-country liquefaction and regasification capacity
- [2] Global Energy Monitor, Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker, gas pipelines (Nov 2025 release), CC BY 4.0: cross-border pipeline capacities
- [3] UN Comtrade, HS 271111 (LNG) and 271121 (pipeline gas), 2024 bilateral trade; non-reporting exporters (Russia, Qatar, UAE, Australia) are captured through importer mirror records
- [4] JODI-Gas (Joint Organisations Data Initiative), world monthly natural gas data (pipeline and LNG imports/exports)
- [5] US EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook Global Energy Security supplement (quarterly from May 2026, public domain): LNG flows in Bcf/d through each maritime chokepoint, from EIA analysis of Vortexa tanker tracking
- [6] US EIA, Today in Energy (24 Jun 2025): about 20% of global LNG trade passed through the Strait of Hormuz in 2024 (Qatar 9.3 Bcf/d, UAE 0.7), with 83% bound for Asia
- [7] International Gas Union, World LNG Report 2025: global liquefaction capacity 494.4 Mtpa at end-2024 (cross-check for the GEM tracker sum of 496)
- [8] UNCTAD, Review of Maritime Transport 2024 (Navigating maritime chokepoints): LNG carrier transits and the Red Sea route as roughly 8% of LNG trade
- [9] A1AYN, Methane: the gas joints, the Finland-scale module this board zooms out from (the Balticconnector and Danish-Straits joints are shared)
- [10] IMF PortWatch via this site's chokepoint monitor: daily transit tempo through the same straits (all tankers; LNG is not separated in the vessel classes, so it is a tempo overlay, not an LNG figure)
Snapshots fetched 2026-07-04 by the manual yarn data:gas-flows script (never in the build chain): GEM tracker capacities (CC BY 4.0), a UN Comtrade bilateral matrix for HS 271111/271121 built because the ready-made Energy Institute matrices are licence-forbidden, and the JODI monthly pulse. Chokepoint LNG volumes are curated from the EIA public-domain quarterly supplement. Honest limits carried on the page: trade figures are values not volumes and directional not audited; Australia and the other non-reporting exporters come through importer mirrors; pipeline figures are capacity not throughput; the export-to-chokepoint routing in the schematic is illustrative while the per-strait LNG volume is cited; and the board counts volumes, never prices. This is a simplified model by design: region blocs, one reroute rule per strait, no network re-solve.