LNG cold and cryogenic recovery: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
LNG arrives deeply chilled and must be warmed back into gas, usually wasting that cold into seawater. Using it for air separation, cold storage or power makes sense only next to a terminal, so value depends on LNG import volumes and local users.
No public price LNG cold and cryogenic recovery has no public monthly price series: Done at a few LNG terminals under private deals; no public price.What its price moves with
Every tonne of imported LNG carries cold that can be recovered during regasification. More LNG imports, as in Japan, Korea, China and India, mean more cold available. This use has no price series, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Regasified LNG becomes ordinary pipeline gas, so recovery adds value without changing the gas itself. Gas demand and terminal throughput set how much cold is available year round. Seasonal swings in gas demand change the cold supply, which complicates design.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Air separation plants beside LNG terminals use the cold to liquefy air, cutting their electricity use. Liquid nitrogen, oxygen and argon from such plants are cheaper to make. Nearby buyers of liquid gases are needed for such plants to pay.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Oxygen for steel mills and hospitals comes from air separation, a power-hungry process. Using LNG cold lowers the energy needed, which is why several Asian terminals host air separation units.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Liquid-air storage also uses deep cold, and LNG cold can make liquid air more cheaply. Both rely on the same cryogenic equipment and engineering skills. Pairing the two at a terminal could cut storage costs, but few projects exist.
No public price for liquid air storage, so the link is explained in words only.LNG cold can serve as the cold end of a power cycle, using seawater as the heat source to drive a turbine. Japanese terminals have run such plants, though output is modest.
No public price for Organic Rankine, Kalina and sCO2 cycles, so the link is explained in words only.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.