BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec.6
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The global liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector is rapidly shrugging off the effects of the coronavirus and is poised to post healthy export growth this year, at 5.8 percent, Trend reports with reference to Fitch Solutions.
“Every region is set to post growth, excluding Europe, due to a temporary hiatus in Russia’s export growth and the diversion of domestic supplies in Norway for LNG to pipelines. In other regions, some combination of rising domestic output and liquefaction capacity additions will support export growth, while subdued prices will help to stimulate gas demand and shoehorn LNG supplies into saturated energy markets,” reads the report.
Fitch Solutions notes that base effects will flatter growth and the return of outed gas supplies and increased utilization of legacy export terminals are a large part of the narrative.
“Meanwhile, new liquefaction capacity additions will be limited, including Corpus Christi T3 in the US, Portovaya in Russia and the de-bottlenecking of the Qalhat facility in Oman. Over 2021-2025 the pace of growth is set to remain strong with an annual average of 6.2 percent, as the roll-off of projects in Australia is offset by rising supply in the US, Qatar and Russia. For the five years in total we forecast net global supply additions of 164.4bcm, or 35.2 percent. This is somewhat softer than the pace of growth seen over 2016-2020, which we estimate at 49 percent, or 154.0bcm. Nevertheless, it paints a healthy picture for supply,” the report says.
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