Natural Gas Desk Academy
Twenty courses. Beginner to advanced. No course assumes what it has not taught.
The learner must be able to meet variable customer demand from a combination of supply, transport and storage rights, and then explain the imbalance exposure and the cash requirements that position creates.
20 courses · 100 to 130 chapters each · every chapter one 8 to 10 minute explainer · self-paced
Twenty courses in dependency order
A course may only assume capability taught by a lower-numbered course, and the level column never falls as you move down the table.
| # | Course | Level | Builds on | What this course owns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Gas literacy and measurement | |||
| 01 | Natural Gas Business from Zero | 1/10 | none | The vocabulary and the physical value chain from wellhead through processing, pipeline and storage to the burner tip, and who the counterparties are at each step. |
| 02 | Units, Heating Value & Quantities | 1/10 | 01 | Conversion between volume, energy and mass, heating value and calorific conventions, and how metered quantity is actually established. |
| 03 | Hubs, Quotations & Regional Markets | 2/10 | 01, 02 | How a hub forms a quoted price, how published indices are constructed and assessed, and where liquidity physically sits across regions. |
| 04 | Supply, Demand & Weather Fundamentals | 2/10 | 01, 03 | Building a supply and demand balance from production, sectoral demand, weather variables and inventory signals. |
| B | Physical contracting and daily operations | |||
| 05 | Purchase & Industrial Supply Agreements | 3/10 | 01, 02, 03 | The clause architecture of a gas purchase and industrial supply agreement, including quantity obligations, pricing clauses, delivery point and remedies. |
| 06 | Pipeline Capacity & Transportation Contracts | 3/10 | 02, 03, 05 | Firm and interruptible capacity rights, tariff structures, fuel retention, and the mechanics of holding and releasing transport. |
| 07 | Nominations, Scheduling & Daily Balancing | 4/10 | 02, 05, 06 | The daily nomination, confirmation and scheduling cycle, and the intraday actions available to hold the book in balance. |
| 08 | Allocation, Imbalances & Invoice Reconciliation | 4/10 | 02, 06, 07 | Post-month allocation, imbalance quantification and cash-out, and the invoice reconciliation and dispute cycle. |
| C | Spread, storage and cash economics | |||
| 09 | Location Basis & Transport Economics | 5/10 | 03, 04, 06 | Measuring location basis and judging whether a transport right is in or out of the money against the delivered alternative. |
| 10 | Storage Commercial Economics | 5/10 | 04, 06, 09 | Valuing a storage right through intrinsic and extrinsic spread capture, injection and withdrawal ratchets, and cycling economics. |
| 11 | Working Capital and Credit for a Gas Supply Book | 6/10 | 05, 08, 10 | The cash and credit layer of the book: margin and collateral calls, letters of credit, borrowing base and inventory financing, and the payment timing cycle that sets peak funding need. |
| 12 | Futures, Swaps & Physical Hedging | 6/10 | 03, 04, 09, 10 | Selecting, sizing, rolling and unwinding futures and swap hedges against a physical position, and quantifying the residual the hedge leaves behind. |
| 13 | Swing, Take-or-Pay & Make-Up Gas | 6/10 | 05, 10, 12 | Pricing and administering contractual flexibility: nomination ranges, take-or-pay obligations, make-up and carry-forward entitlements. |
| D | Customer supply and regional specialisation | |||
| 14 | Customer Origination & Supply Pricing | 7/10 | 05, 11, 12, 13 | Constructing a customer offer: load-shape costing, pass-through and fixed-price structures, and margin build-up to a quoted supply price. |
| 15 | European Gas Commercial Practice | 7/10 | 03, 06, 09, 12 | European market mechanics: entry and exit capacity regimes, hub-centred trading and settlement practice, and European storage and regulatory obligations. |
| 16 | North American Gas Commercial Practice | 7/10 | 06, 07, 09, 12 | North American market mechanics: the regulatory and standards framework, interstate capacity release, and first-of-month and daily index conventions. |
| 17 | Options, Weather Exposure & Flexible Hedging | 8/10 | 04, 12, 13 | Option-based risk transfer and weather exposure management: option structures, volatility inputs, and hedging volume risk that varies with temperature. |
| E | Integrated book management | |||
| 18 | Supply, Storage & Demand Portfolio | 9/10 | 10, 12, 13, 17 | The consolidated portfolio decision: optimising supply, transport, storage and demand positions together against limits, and reporting one portfolio position. |
| 19 | Supply Security & Extreme-Weather Response | 9/10 | 04, 07, 10, 18 | Stress response: curtailment priority, emergency procurement, force majeure execution and resilience planning for a supply obligation under extreme conditions. |
| 20 | Integrated Gas Merchant Simulation | 10/10 | 14, 17, 18, 19 | Running the whole merchant book through multi-period live constraints with accountability for profit, cash position and imbalance outcomes. |
Every course states the capability it owns. The brochure carries the same table plus the chapter list behind each course, which is the quickest way to find the course that teaches the thing you cannot currently do.
The whole desk end to end, in one programme
The twenty courses take one capability at a time, in dependency order, for someone building from the ground up. The Natural Gas Desk Master Programme does the opposite: it runs the whole natural gas desk front to back in a single sequence, for someone who already works on a desk and wants the shape of the job quickly rather than the long route.
Take whichever matches your starting point. They cover the same ground and several of the numbered courses draw on the same material.
Take one course, or the whole pathway
Each course stands alone. Taken in order, the twenty build one desk capability from no prior knowledge.