Page 5 - NorthAmOil Week 09 2022

NorthAmOil COMMENTARY NorthAmOil

tanker departed Calcasieu Pass on March 1 with stopped, though urgent plans are under devel-
the first commissioning cargo from the facility. opment to reduce European dependence on
The vessel’s destination remained uncertain as it. Indeed, it is not just pipeline gas flowing to
of March 3, but traders were cited as saying it Europe from Russia, with consultancy Rystad
would likely stay in the Atlantic Basin, possibly Energy reporting on March 4 that at least five
heading to Europe. The Yiannis is chartered by LNG vessels were heading from Russia to West-
Japan’s JERA, which has access to the Dunker- ern European ports.
que LNG import terminal in France. However, the risk of a major disruption to
JERA and Venture Global said in a joint state- Russian gas flows to the continent now looks
ment that Calcasieu Pass now holds the global far more likely, and contingency plans are being
record for the fastest large-scale greenfield LNG made.
facility to ever be built, moving from a final The EIA said that Russia, the US and Qatar
investment decision (FID) to LNG production combined accounted for almost 70% of Europe’s
in 29 months. Venture Global has already set out LNG imports in 2021. The US’ share of this has
plans to begin construction on its second termi- been steadily rising over the past few years, and
nal, Plaquemines LNG, which is seen as likely to this is set to continue. However, there are also
be the next US LNG project to reach FID. other logistical challenges to consider, including
Other Gulf Coast facilities are moving closer limited spare regasification capacity on the con- Europe remained
to FID too, including expansions at the exist- tinent. And analysts have noted that LNG alone
ing Corpus Christi and Cameron LNG. Mean- would not be enough to make up the shortfall if the top importer
while, Tellurian recently announced plans to Russian gas flows to Europe are disrupted. of US LNG for the
begin construction on Driftwood LNG in April If other Europeans countries follow Ger-
regardless of whether it has finalised the financ- many’s lead in supporting and expediting new third consecutive
ing for the project at that point or not. LNG import projects, this could help, but, like
Other projects still are also trying to progress, the construction of export terminals, that would month in
though they still need to secure enough offtak- take time. Europe thus finds itself in a difficult
ers to enable them to proceed. These include position, but the war in Ukraine makes it more February.
NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG, on which an likely that support for both import terminals at
FID was recently pushed back to the second half home and export projects abroad will rise.™
of 2022. NextDecade only has one offtake agree-
ment for the facility so far, with Shell, covering NewsBase’s sister publication bne IntelliNews is
2mn tpy over a 20-year period. The company’s following the war in Ukraine and its fall out with
plans include an initial two-train development daily reports with correspondents across the entire
with a capacity of 11mn tpy, which would later Emerging Europe region, including in both Russia
be expanded to five trains with a capacity of and Ukraine. Or sign up to Editor’s Picks here, a
27mn tpy. free daily email digest of the most important sto-
ries in the last 24 hours. At the moment Editor’s
What next? Picks is almost entirely dedicated to following the
Flows of Russian gas to Europe have not conflict in Ukraine.

Week 09 03•March•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P5