Market Data

What Is Henry Hub? The $3.29/MMBtu Benchmark Behind Every U.S. Gas Bill

A plain-English guide to the price that anchors nearly every U.S. natural gas contract, where it is set, how EIA measures it, and the three forces that move it.

Henry Hub is the U.S. benchmark natural gas spot price, quoted daily by the Energy Information Administration at a pipeline interchange in Erath, Louisiana, and it stands at $3.29/MMBtu as of Jul 6, 2026. Nearly every U.S. gas contract, utility tariffs, industrial supply deals, NYMEX futures, settles against or references this one number.

Why a Louisiana pipeline junction sets the national price

Henry Hub is a physical place: a junction where more than a dozen interstate and intrastate pipelines interconnect, which means gas priced there can actually flow to buyers across much of the country. That physical deliverability is what made it the settlement point for the NYMEX natural gas futures contract in 1990, and liquidity has compounded ever since, the more contracts reference the hub, the more traders quote it, and the more meaningful the price becomes. The EIA series tracked here is the daily spot price: what a million Btu of gas delivered at the hub traded for that day, as distinct from futures prices for later months.

The three forces that move it

First, weather-driven demand: heating load in winter and power-plant cooling burn in summer swing consumption faster than supply can respond, which is why gas is among the most seasonal of commodities. Second, storage: the industry injects gas into underground storage roughly April through October and withdraws it November through March, and each week's storage report is read against the five-year norm as the market's supply-cushion gauge. Third, LNG exports: liquefaction terminals now link the hub to world prices, so a cold snap in Europe or Asia can pull on Louisiana molecules. Those forces have kept the archived window here between $3.06 (Jun 12, 2026) and $3.34 (Jun 30, 2026), with the current print in the upper third of that band.

Henry Hub natural gas spot, Jul 6, 2026: $3.29/MMBtu. Archived range: $3.06 (Jun 12, 2026) to $3.34 (Jun 30, 2026).

The hub price is not what a factory pays. It is the number everything a factory pays is built on.

From benchmark to boiler: the arithmetic

Gas is quoted in dollars per million Btu; utility bills often show therms, and one MMBtu is ten therms, so today's $3.29/MMBtu equals about $0.33 per therm at the hub, before pipeline transport, local distribution charges, and retail margin are added. For a plant boiler burning 12,000 MMBtu a year, the commodity portion of the bill at the current hub price runs about $39,480. The gap between that figure and the actual invoice is the delivered adder, basis, transport, and utility charges, which is the piece a plant can negotiate or engineer around, since the hub price itself negotiates with no one.

Put your burner load, cycle time, and current gas price into the natural gas cost per batch calculator to see the commodity cost inside each run. Cost a gas-fired batch

Published 2026-07-13.