Profile picture for user Kent Bayazitoglu
Kent Bayazitoglu
Baker & O'Brien

Kent holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University and an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He offers 22 years of experience in the refining and natural gas industries, including extensive expertise in financial modeling, energy trading, and hedging activities. Kent joins us from Gelber & Associates in Houston, where he was Director of Market Analytics and a Market Advisor in natural gas and other commodities. Kent has also worked extensively with Cascade Natural Gas, a natural gas distribution company headquartered in Kennewick, Washington, along with other utility companies across the U.S. Kent started his career with ExxonMobil Corporation as a Project Manager at the Baytown refinery. Kent has served as an expert witness in legal disputes involving bankruptcies, complex trading books, and pricing disagreements. These disputes have concerned a variety of fuels, including natural gas, NGLs, crude oil, refined products, and coal.

Posts by Kent Bayazitoglu
- Blog

You're the Best Around - How TTF Became a Premier Natural Gas Trading Hub and Global Benchmark

Author Kent Bayazitoglu

In the past few years, the Netherland’s Title Transfer Facility (TTF) overtook the UK’s National Balancing Point (NBP) to become the premier gas trading hub in Europe. TTF has gained favor over NBP largely due to its location closer to more markets, supply pipelines, plentiful storage, and also the Netherlands’ Gate LNG import terminal, which has become paramount given Europe’s growing need for imported gas. As imports have grown, so has TTF in terms of its volume and its liquidity — a trend that is expected to continue as the European gas market evolves. TTF now shares the stage with Henry Hub and the Japan Korea Marker (JKM) as one of the key global benchmarks for LNG and natural gas. Though traders use TTF as a price index for LNG, much like its cross-Atlantic peer, Henry Hub, TTF is also heavily influenced by regional pipeline gas and storage levels. Today, we’ll look at the history of Europe’s premier natural gas index and the fundamentals affecting it.