Another way of depicting Amaranth’s natural gas positions
is to compare them to the open interest of NYMEX natural
gas futures contracts (abbreviated as NYMEX NGFOI). Figure
8 compares the actual Amaranth positions to the open interest
of NYMEX natural gas futures. Figure 8A shows all the
Amaranth positions (including ICE positions as well) as a
percentage of the NYMEX NGFOI. In many contract months,
this is greater than 100%.33 Figure 8B shows only the positions
on NYMEX as a percentage of NYMEX NGFOI. It is still
very high and, in some contracts, greater than 100% as well.
Figure 8C shows only Amaranth’s position in NYMEX natural
gas futures as a percentage of NYMEX NGFOI. Even by this
very direct measure of Amaranth’s positions on the NYMEX
exchange, their positions were excessive representing more
than 50% of the open interest in many contracts and almost
100% in some contracts. In some contracts, Amaranth had
positions of nearly 100,000 contracts, which represents
roughly 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 23% of the amount
of natural gas consumed by residential users in 2006, and 5%
of the total amount of natural gas consumed in the United
States in 2006