THE NEWS

According to OilPrice.com, analysts at Wood Mackenzie project that U.S. natural gas prices will rise through 2035, ending a prolonged period of suppressed Henry Hub benchmarks. The consultancy points to two converging demand drivers: the expansion of U.S. LNG export infrastructure and the surge in electricity consumption from AI data centers.

During the decade to 2025, Henry Hub prices held within a narrow band of $2 to $4 per MMBtu. That range was sustained by robust domestic production growth, as operators committed capital to dedicated gas plays and generated substantial associated gas volumes from oil-focused drilling programs.

Wood Mackenzie's analysis signals that supply growth alone is unlikely to keep pace with the combined pull of export capacity additions and domestic power demand, setting the conditions for a sustained upward price adjustment through the middle of the next decade.

WHY IT MATTERS

For Brazilian offshore professionals, the immediate instinct may be to treat U.S. Henry Hub pricing as a distant market signal. That reading underestimates how tightly the global LNG pricing architecture has become coupled to U.S. export economics over the past five years.

Brazil is both an LNG importer and, through its pre-sal gas volumes, a potential future LNG exporter — a dual position that makes the direction of U.S. prices consequential from two sides of the ledger. On the import side, Petrobras and Brazilian power distributors have used LNG regasification terminals as a flexible backstop for the national grid during low-hydrology periods. If the floor under U.S. LNG cargo prices rises in line with a structurally higher Henry Hub, the cost of that flexibility increases. Petrobras's gas and power division, which manages regasification contracts and supply optimization, will need to weigh that against domestic gas pricing dynamics and the pace of pre-sal gas monetization.

On the export side, the picture is more nuanced. Brazil's associated gas volumes from pre-sal fields are substantial, but the infrastructure to monetize them as LNG — rather than reinject, flare, or route to domestic markets — remains underdeveloped relative to the resource base. A higher global LNG price environment, anchored in part by a rising Henry Hub, does improve the theoretical economics of a Brazilian LNG export project. However, the investment horizon for such infrastructure is long, and the window of demand growth that Wood Mackenzie identifies through 2035 is not indefinitely open. Brazilian operators and regulators considering gas monetization pathways face a tighter decision timeline than the headline forecast might suggest.

The AI data center demand signal deserves particular attention. It represents a category of gas demand that is geographically concentrated, capital-intensive to build, and — once operational — highly inelastic. Unlike industrial or residential demand, data center power loads do not respond to price signals in the short term. This structural inelasticity in U.S. domestic demand means that LNG export volumes may face more competition for available supply than historical patterns would suggest, which supports the upward price trajectory Wood Mackenzie describes.

For Brazilian suppliers and engineering firms active in the LNG equipment and services segment, a higher and more stable U.S. price environment may translate into increased upstream capital expenditure by U.S. gas producers — sustaining demand for drilling services, subsea equipment, and compression technology in which Brazilian-based suppliers participate through global supply chains.

The regulatory dimension also warrants monitoring. ANP's gas sector framework and the ongoing implementation of Brazil's new gas market rules — designed to open third-party access to pipelines and stimulate competition — were conceived against a backdrop of moderate global LNG prices. A sustained upward shift in the international reference price strengthens the commercial case for domestic gas infrastructure investment, which could accelerate regulatory decisions around pipeline access tariffs and gas field development approvals.

CONTEXT

The $2–$4/MMBtu Henry Hub range that defined the past decade was itself a structural anomaly, produced by the coincidence of shale productivity gains and relatively modest LNG export capacity. The U.S. became a net LNG exporter in 2016 and has since expanded to become one of the world's leading suppliers. Each successive wave of liquefaction capacity additions has deepened the link between U.S. domestic prices and the global LNG market.

Wood Mackenzie's projection through 2035 aligns with a broader consultancy consensus that the era of abundant, cheap U.S. gas as an unconstrained global buffer is being revised upward — not reversed, but recalibrated. For Brazilian market participants, the practical implication is that LNG as a flexible supply tool becomes more expensive to access, while LNG as a monetization route for domestic gas becomes incrementally more attractive. Both dynamics are worth tracking as Petrobras and its consortium partners advance gas development decisions in the Santos and Campos basins.