There were already plenty of signs of extreme tightness in the market. War and Covid may be roiling every commodity from wheat to aluminum and zinc, but little compares to the stomach-churning volatility of global gas prices. In Asia, the fuel is now about three times as expensive as a year ago. In Europe, it’s one of the main reasons why inflation just hit a fresh record.
Natural gas soars 700%, becoming driving force in the new cold war
In short, natural gas now rivals oil as the fuel that shapes geopolitics. And there isn't enough of it to go around
Topics
natural gas | Natural gas price | Gas price
Gerson Freitas Jr Stephen Stapczynski & Anna Shiryaevskaya | Bloomberg Last Updated at July 5, 2022 14:01
". . .Import terminals: In Europe, plans for about 20 terminals have been announced or sped up since the Ukraine war began. Germany, which has no LNG terminals, has allocated about $3 billion to charter four floating ones and connect them to the country’s network. The first one is supposed to go online around the end of this year. Emphasizing the need for speed, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck pointed out that Tesla Inc. managed to build a factory near Berlin in just two years, and said it’s time to cut through German red tape. “First, dig the trench where the pipe is to go in,” he said. “Then, the permit comes.”
China, the world’s top LNG buyer last year, is in the midst of one of the largest buildouts the industry has ever witnessed. Ten new import terminals are slated to come online in 2023 alone, and capacity will roughly double in the five years through 2025, according to BloombergNEF.
Pipelines: Even with more capacity to receive shipments of LNG and turn it back into gas form — a process known as regasification — Europe lacks infrastructure to move it where it might be needed. Spain, for example, has Europe’s biggest regasification facilities — but it only has two pipeline connections to France via the Pyrenees, capable of carrying little more than one-tenth of those volumes, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Tankers: Shipyards in South Korea, where most of the world’s LNG tankers are built, are seeing a surge in orders that’s leaving them short of skilled labor. They’ve been forced to look outside the country to places like Thailand for welders, electricians and painters, raising their quotas for migrant workers.
In some cases all of this means a U-turn away from policies aimed at combating climate change -– especially in Europe. Government-backed lenders like the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which had been focused on financing renewable energy, have signaled a shift and said they’re now more willing to back gas projects.
But Europe’s breakneck efforts won’t be enough, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, which calculates that LNG imports could meet 40% of the region’s gas needs by 2026 — double last year’s figure, but still far short of the volumes that Russia has been supplying.
‘Never More Evident’
That’s why warnings of a gas-driven slump in Europe’s economies are escalating.
Duration: 3:24
Posted: 8 hours ago
Last week, Germany’s government said it’s in talks to bail out utility Uniper SE, which is losing some 30 million euros ($31 million) a day because it has to cover the missing Russian gas at soaring spot-market prices. Companies like chemicals giant BASF SE say they may have to cut output. Deutsche Bank cited growing risks of an “imminent German recession on the back of energy rationing,” and pointed to soaring power prices in Italy and France too. Morgan Stanley predicted the whole euro area will be in a downturn by year-end.
For some emerging economies — which increasingly have to compete with rich countries like Germany in bidding for LNG cargoes, as gas goes global — the consequences have already been disastrous. . ."
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