Thursday 20 October 2022 · below the Index · spike
LNG carrier backlog off European ports
Dozens of LNG carriers queued off European ports in mid-October 2022, unable to unload cargo as receiving terminals reached capacity amid high demand for natural gas.
Peak 49.4 on Friday 21 October 2022. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Public curiosity-led, both over the window and on the peak day. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 22% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 14 October 2022.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: freight markets. Trade press was 10% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 0% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Dozens of LNG Carriers Back Up Off European Ports Waiting to Unloadgcaptain.com · 2022-10-18
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title. fewer than three independent outlets.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (10/156 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
- coverage panel is based on only 10 articles (< 30) — directional, not precise
Maritime Attention Index, incident: LNG carrier backlog off European ports, peak 49.4 on 21 October 2022. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2022-lng-carrier-backlog-off-european-ports/