Trump’s hard sell of American LNG

[Elderberry]

Houston Chronicle by  James Osborne Sep. 5, 2019

More than 30 liquefied natural gas import terminals are spread across Europe, so many that tankers coming in from Qatar, the United States and other LNG-producing nations are not nearly enough to meet the facilities’ capacity.

Yet announcements of new import terminals in countries such as Germany and Poland keep coming. In part, that reflects the expectation that demand for liquefied natural gas will increase as the continent shifts away from coal and tries to reduce its dependence on gas delivered through Russian pipelines.

But governments in Europe and across the globe also are coming under increasing pressure to buy American LNG from a Trump administration that has shown a willingness to upend longstanding trade norms in the interests of increasing U.S. exports.

“President Trump himself has stepped forward to be a consistently a big promoter of U.S. LNG when he’s meeting with other heads of state. He’s been very explicit about it,” said Dan Yergin, an energy industry historian and vice chairman of the consulting firm IHS Markit. “Europe has a great surplus of LNG gasification, but still Germany has been supporting the development of two LNG terminals, seemingly out of deference to Washington.”

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Trump-s-hard-sell-of-American-LNG-14414269.php

[thackney]

EU need for more Nat Gas is compounded by the shutting down of Groningen.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-13/europe-gets-bailout-as-cheap-lng-offsets-decline-in-gas-output

...The Groningen field, once Europe’s largest, is being phased out and will be closed completely by 2030 as the Dutch government seeks to limit earthquakes provoked by gas exploration. Its production is forecast to fall to less than half the nation’s requirements in the year through October, and will be just a third of peak output in 2013, according to BloombergNEF.

That output decline comes as the European Union needs more gas to compensate for the retirement of coal and nuclear plants. The International Energy Agency estimates the 28-nation bloc will have to seek additional imports equal to one-third of anticipated consumption by 2025....