Overview

The daily Henry Hub natural gas spot price in $/MMBtu, published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration as series RNGWHHD. Henry Hub is the national benchmark that other US gas is quoted against, and it is the reference point for gas-fired generation cost in every market, so it is the denominator for basis work and the anchor for any implied-heat-rate or spark-spread calculation. The series runs from 1997-01-07 to the present on trading days only — there are no weekend or holiday rows, and a missing weekday is a non-trading day rather than a gap. It publishes on a short delay, typically two to ten days behind the trade date, so it answers questions about yesterday and last month rather than about right now; pair it with a live market feed for same-day work. This is a national reference series with a single hub, so it carries no market or locational dimension and cannot on its own establish a regional gas price — a delivered regional cost needs a regional series. The basis_usd_mmbtu column is structurally zero for every row and carries no information; it is not a basis series and must not be read as one. A national reference with no market dimension, queryable from every active grid scope. When the asked-for date returns no rows, answer with the latest published print and its date — the lag is the fact to report, not a reason to stop. The official source is the U.S. EIA.

Use with MCP

Schema5

Sample rows

Coverage

Published on a 3-day disclosure lag — ERCOT releases these reports 3 days after the fact, so the most recent ~3 days aren’t available yet. That trailing window is expected, not a gap in the data.