Japan, the world’s biggest importer of LNG, pays about $18 per British thermal units, versus$10 in Europe and $3~4 in the U.S. It is tired of paying such a price for a resource that has become so important. So Japan is preparing to launch the first LNG futures market.

According to MetalMiner IndX℠ data, grain-oriented electrical steel coil prices and electrical steel coil surcharges per metric ton have both been consistently declining over the past half-year, and the GOES coil price per ton as of September 2012 is the lowest it’s been since June 2006.

In Chinese ports, coal stocks accumulate and are currently at the highest level since autumn 2008, at the beginning of the global economic crisis. In mid-June, 9.46 million tons of coal were stored, for a total capacity of Chinese ports just above 10 million tonnes.

Temperatures around the U.S. have been as high as 65 degrees Fahrenheit (19.4 Celsius) above normal in the past week, with 400 record highs set yesterday, said Laura Furgione, deputy director of the National Weather Service.

Mirroring the gas market, wholesale electricity prices have dropped more than 50 percent on average since 2008, and about 10 percent during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a Jan. 11 research report by Aneesh Prabhu, a New York-based credit analyst with Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC.