| As a kind of cleaner energy than oil and coal,Natural gas has been advocated by countries all over the world in recent years to create a green and sustainable development market.However,natural gas has not yet formed a global trading market like oil,and its pricing mechanism varies greatly in different countries and regions affected by factors such as energy reserves and geographical environment.At present,there are two main natural gas pricing modes in the international market,one is "oil indexation pricing" based on crude oil price and the other is "gas to gas pricing" based on the price of natural gas trading center represented by the United States.According to these two pricing methods,the main gas trading markets in the world can be divided into three regions: North America,Europe and Asia.The main purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the different pricing mechanisms of natural gas in the current international market and the influencing factors of natural gas prices under different pricing mechanisms.The article is divided into seven chapters,following the idea of "observing phenomena,raising problems,empirical analysis,solving problems",to study the pricing of natural gas market and the influencing factors.The contents of each chapter are arranged as follows:The first chapter describes the pricing mechanism of natural gas in the international market,and introduces the pricing methods and development process of natural gas in three major international natural gas trading markets(North America,Europe and Asia).The second chapter mainly introduces the development of China’s natural gas market.Firstly,it introduces the pricing methods of natural gas from different sources in China,and then describes the reform process of China’s natural gas pricing mechanism in recent years.The third chapter is the review of the domestic and foreign research literature on natural gas market.This chapter first summarizes the research on the relationship between natural gas price and crude oil price.It points out that the natural gas price in the United States has gradually decoupled from crude oil price since the shale gas revolution,and the global natural gas pricing mechanism has changed from oil indexation pricing to gas to gas pricing.Then this chapter analyses other factors affecting the price of natural gas besides crude oil price,and introduces the concept of energy financialization,pointing out that the natural gas market will also be affected by the financial market.Next,this chapter collates the literature about natural gas’ s price elasticity.Finally,the research literature on China’s natural gas market is summarized from the aspects of natural gas import demand,price elasticity,price subsidies and the impact of China’s natural gas market development.The fourth chapter examines the bubble periods of global crude oil price,the US,Europe and Japan’s natural gas price through Generalized Sup ADF test,and compares the bubble interval and the number of bubbles of natural gas price in different markets to analyze which gas price is more stable.The results show that when the global oil price fluctuates sharply,the price of natural gas in Eurasian market will also be affected,and the bubble characteristics similar to that of crude oil price.However,this will not happen in the US natural gas market which has competitive gas pricing mechanism.The result means that the price of natural gas in the United States market has gradually decoupled from the global crude oil price,while there is still a close link between the price of natural gas in Europe and Asia market and the global crude oil price.In addition,comparing the bubble area between the US and Europe and Asia’s natural gas prices,we find that the natural gas price bubble in the US market is much less than that in Europe and Asia.The price of natural gas based on crude oil price in Europe and Asia shows more frequent price fluctuations than that in the US natural gas trading center.Therefore,it is a better choice for the healthy development of natural gas market to establish natural gas trading centers and adopt competitive pricing methods.Chapter 5 analyses the influencing factors and the changes of influencing factors of natural gas prices in the U.S.market through Dynamic Model Average Theory(DMA).It is found that since the massive exploitation of shale gas in the United States,on the one hand,Henry Hub’s natural gas price has gradually decoupled from crude oil price,on the other hand,the determinants of Henry Hub’s natural gas price has become more and more diversified.The influence of gas supply and demand,gas storage,climate and other basic factors on natural gas price fluctuation in the United States market has increased significantly since the shale gas revolution,and the influence of coal price fluctuation on natural gas price has also gradually increased.In addition,the relationship between Henry Hub’s gas price and financial market is becoming closer and closer,and the financialization degree of U.S.natural gas market is getting higher.Chapter 6 uses vector error correction model to analyze the influencing factors of China’s natural gas import price(pipeline natural gas import price and LNG import price).It is found that China’s natural gas import price is affected not only by crude oil price,but also by domestic natural gas supply and demand,as well as climate change.Specifically,the import price of pipeline natural gas in China will be affected by the total domestic gas production and heating degree days,while the import price of LNG will be affected by the import demand of natural gas in China.In recent years,China is gradually carrying out the market-oriented reform of natural gas pricing mechanism.Our research also finds that the impact of oil price fluctuation on China’s natural gas import price has decreased after the reform of natural gas pricing mechanism,while the impact of supply,demand and climate factors has increased,which to some extent implies that the market-oriented reform of natural gas pricing mechanism in China has achieved initial results.Chapter 7 summarizes the research content and empirical results of the article,explores the policy implications of the conclusions,and looking forward to future research directions.The conclusions of the article can be summarized into three aspects:(1)The natural gas price bubble interval and the bubble duration in the US market are much less than those in Europe and Asia.Therefore,the establishment of a natural gas trading center and competitive pricing is a better choice for the healthy development of the natural gas market.(2)The influencing factors of natural gas price formulated around the natural gas trading center are extremely diversified,and the degree of financialization of the U.S.natural gas market is gradually increasing.The shale gas revolution plays the most important role in the changing process of determinants of natural gas price in the United States.(3)The import price of natural gas in China is not only affected by the price of crude oil,but also by the supply and demand of natural gas market and climate factors.In the process of reforming China’s natural gas pricing mechanism,supply and demand factors in the natural gas market and climate factors have increased their impact on the import price of natural gas.Therefore,in the process of market-oriented reform of China’s natural gas pricing mechanism,we should speed up infrastructure construction,encourage shale gas development,and ensure the safety of domestic natural gas supply.The innovations of this article are mainly embodied in the innovation of research perspective and empirical methods.The innovation of research perspective: First of all,many previous studies have pointed out that the shale gas revolution in the United States has brought great impact on the global natural gas market.Eurasia is also actively establishing natural gas trading centers to promote the development of natural gas market by referring to the development model of the United States natural gas market.However,few studies have explored the advantages of pricing natural gas trading centers.From the perspective of bubble detection,by comparing the natural gas market prices in the United States,Europe,Japan and the bubble interval of global crude oil prices,this paper clearly demonstrates the advantages of the "trading center pricing" method in reflecting the market information in the process of natural gas price formation.Secondly,there are many studies on the influencing factors of natural gas market price in the United States,but these studies are all about some influencing factors of natural gas price,and no systematic and comparative analysis has been made on the changes of these influencing factors in these years.In this paper,the dynamic model averaging theory(DMA)is used to study the natural gas price in Henry Center of the United States,to explore the changes of the influencing factors of the natural gas price in the United States in recent years,and to focus on the relationship between the natural gas price and the financial market.Finally,there are few studies on the influencing factors of natural gas import price in China.Through vector error correction model,this paper not only considers the influence of natural gas supply and demand factors and domestic climate factors on China’s natural gas import price,but also explores the role of crude oil price,market supply and demand factors in the formation process of natural gas import price in the process of marketization of China’s natural gas pricing mechanism.The innovation of empirical methods: Firstly,Phillips et al.(2011,2012,2015)proposed sup ADF detection and its extensibility method GSADF(Generalized Sup ADF)test to determine whether the market has bubbles,but also to determine the time of bubble generation and the bubble time.This method has been used to detect price bubbles in the crude oil market many times,and there is little research on price bubbles in the natural gas market.Secondly,Dynamic Model Averaging(DMA)was proposed by Raftery et al.(2010)and advocated by Koop and Korobilis(2011).This model has been widely used in price forecasting of crude oil,real estate and other markets.The forecasting models and parameters can be different at each moment,and the time-varying model can be constructed.It makes the prediction more accurate.By using the dynamic model average theory to analyze the influencing factors of natural gas price in the United States market,we can accurately get the reasons for the change of natural gas price in the United States in different periods,and the importance of each influencing factor in the process of determining the price of natural gas in the United States market.Finally,Engle and Granger(1987)combined the co-integration and error correction models to establish the Vector Error Correction Mechanism,which is mostly applied to the modeling of non-stationary time series with co-integration relationship.Vector error correction model can study the long-term and short-term correlation between time series.It is believed that the variation of explanatory variables is determined by relatively stable long-term trends and short-term fluctuations.This method has been used many times to study the relationship between natural gas market prices and crude oil prices in the United States and Europe.This may be the first time that this method has been used to analyze the import price of natural gas in China. |
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