The prospect of large winter price premiums and the challenge of infrastructure bottlenecks are driving traders and utilities to stash LNG volumes at sea, ballooning the levels of floating gas in storage to a two-year high and sustaining lofty charter rates.

Daily floating storage levels reached 1.5 million tons (Mt) of liquefied natural gas stored in vessels globally in the first weeks of September, according to data from Kpler. 

Kpler’s Charles Costerousse, market data analyst, said levels have fluctuated since the beginning of the month before ultimately falling to a current range of around 1.1 Mt to 1.3 Mt. Costerousse told NGI that most vessels storing LNG offshore have been tracked around the northern coasts of the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam region and the Mediterranean...