Repricing the Grid: US Natural Gas Markets in the Age of AI and Data Centers

The AI boom is rewriting the US natural gas map. As data centre operators race to secure power, gas demand is surging in places the market has never had to price with precision before — and legacy benchmarks are being tested by flows they were never designed to reflect. Pipeline bottlenecks out of the Permian have already pushed Waha Hub into prolonged negative pricing even as demand from Gulf Coast LNG and Texas data centres climbs, while secondary hubs near emerging AI build-outs in Virginia, Georgia, Ohio and beyond are seeing new and unfamiliar basis risk. Forecasts point to AI-linked gas demand reaching well over 6 Bcf/d by 2030 — and corporates, traders and risk teams are having to ask a new question: are we even pricing gas in the right places? In this session, General Index and Bloomberg experts will explore why the AI-driven build-out of US data centre capacity is forcing a rethink of natural gas price discovery — and why granular, location-specific benchmarks are becoming essential to managing exposure across an increasingly fragmented market.