The energy crisis has now become so significant and so many headlines about it. It's actually our own Wikipedia page now, 2021 global energy crisis. You know, it's been going on now for quite some time, it's becoming worse here in Europe. We had beginning of October, the prices went record high and President Putin, he came to the market and said, promised more supply from Russia. That has not really materialized, prices are now back at record high. You know, we have a lot of political complications because people are not really happy about the gas prices.
Even here in Norway, the government has now gone in and subsidized the price of electricity, which is at least the first time I can remember that happening. If you just jump to the next page and we can have a look at some of the reasons there. As I mentioned, we had very high prices in October. This is monthly aggregate, so it kind of doesn't really show the intraday movement in prices. I think sixth of October was the peak. Then the Asian gas prices jumped from, like, $35 to $56 in one day, and then they bounced back to around $35 the next day after Putin made his remarks about more Russian gas flows. Now they are back up to almost $40.
This time it's happening both in Europe and in Asia. Europe has been slow to fill up the gas inventories and are now facing a big shortage, and that's driving up the European prices at par with the Asian prices. Usually the European prices are at a discount to the Asian prices as it takes a longer route to transport cargos to Asia generally than Europe. That is also creating some implication for the freight market. Tonne miles is dropping, and that's why the spot market is also becoming a bit softer. What we should also take into note there, you know, we were presenting our Q3 numbers a month ago, and then kind of the summer prices for Asian gas and European gas was at around $15.
Today, they are $10 higher, just one month later. We've really seen the curve being pushed up, not only on the front end, but also throughout the whole of 2022. We have not only a shortage this year, but we will have a shortage next year as well, because inventories after this winter will be so low that restocking demand will be extremely high. We see that by 2023, we are getting into more normal levels, although still pretty elevated prices above $10, both in Europe and Asia in 2023. Which is pretty high prices, and it's higher than the oil contracted price, which is, you know, converging at around $10. If we jump to the next slide, this is a slide from our Q3 report.
You can see the demand growth for LNG from January to October. We could see that the Asian markets were grabbing market share from Europe. Europe was the region where we had some decline, also somewhat in India. A big decline in Europe, and this was caused by the Asian nations being willing to pay whatever it take to get the cargo. China growing close to 20%, same with South Korea. We have had this big drought in Brazil, so Brazil has actually been growing tremendously, 350%, 5 million tons. This is a country that usually hasn't been importing a lot of LNG the last couple of years, but this year has been importing a lot.
Cargo's been diverted from Europe, and I've updated the storage numbers now for Europe. Europe is now at 62% filled storage, which is like 20 percentage points below where they usually are. In the event of a cold winter, these storages will be empty when we are getting out of the winter. That's why we have this energy crisis. Europe hasn't been able to push up their inventories ahead of the winter and are now desperate and are now willing to pay also whatever it takes to get cargos. If we jump to the next slide, we do see that when you see these spot rates, you are not thinking that you are in a market that is softening. Rates are at around $200,000 per day.
If rates were jumping from 150 to 200, people, you know, the market would be on fire. Now it's been dropping from 300 to 200 levels, so people are a bit more pessimistic. These are the high fuel rates. Given the high gas prices, it's of course a big advantage having an efficient ship which can also transport more gas. The MEGI X-DF or the modern tonnage is trading at a premium according to Spark's of around $54,000 to these numbers. These are different indexes. It's the Baltic and the Spark.
Still at pretty good levels, but it has softened the last month or so because the European gas prices have been pushing up, and that means that more of this cargo from the U.S. has gone to Europe rather than taking the longer route to Asia and actually congestion in Panama has somewhat eased as well. If we jump to the next slide. Despite the spot market rates softening, we don't see the same thing happening with the term rates. This is the one-year term rate from Fearnleys, and the three-year term rate from Affinity. They've basically been stabilizing. The one-year time charter rate from Fearnleys is at $125, reflecting the fact that gas demand will be very high next year. There will be a lot fewer ships coming to the market next year.
Volume growth will probably be pretty high next year as well because the U.S. is pushing up with a lot of new volumes and will probably be the biggest exporter in the world already in 2022. I think this is a bit ahead of people's expectations. The three-year rate is around $95,000. This is a pretty good and a firm rate. We see that we are coming from a market where these rates were basically at around $60,000. They are now a lot better. For us, the last slide I do think I have is just our portfolio. Of course, we've been fixing a lot of ships this year. Now eight or nine ships been fixed on longer-term contracts, and then I mean 3 to 5 years tenors. It will be eight.
It will be nine if Cheniere is taking the option for the fifth ship, which is Flex Volunteer. We do see that Flex Freedom will be going on a 5-year charter in Q1 next year. Constellation is already on a 3-year charter. Endeavour, Ranger, and Vigilant have gone to Cheniere for 3-3.8 year. Aurora will go to Cheniere Q3 next year. Courageous and Resolute will go on 3 + 2 + 2 time charters early next year. Flex Rainbow, we just recently extended by 1 year to Q1 2023. Flex Volunteer is the ship we have in the spot market, so she's been doing pretty well in Q4. We do expect her to go to Cheniere on a 3.5-year contract starting up Q3 next year.
We have three ships which have been on index, which we also have got a good benefit from having ships tied to the spot market in end of this year. This is Flex Optimist, which is on a five-year index. Flex Amber and Flex Enterprise also on shorter indexes. All in all, pretty good coverage for next year. Really the only thing we have open now is a small gap on Flex Aurora during the summer. Flex Volunteer will stay open in the spot market until Q3 next year and where we will figure out whether she will go to Cheniere, which we do expect. Flex Enterprise declaration of that option will also materialize soon. But we do expect also her to continue on our existing charter.
All in all, very good and robust coverage for next year and also into 2023 and 2024. That's it from the LNG updates. Markets are going up and down, but still pretty strong market and outlook for next year with these high gas prices are also very compelling in my view.