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Green energy could reduce Asian

LNG production emissions by 8%

PROJECTS & USING renewable energy to operate LNG pro- Asia Pacific’s LNG plants by 8% in 2020 alone,”
COMPANIES duction plants across the Asia-Pacific region Taylor added.
could reduce emissions by about 8%, according Taylor said: “A carbon tax is likely to be the
to analysis by Wood Mackenzie. biggest driver for LNG projects to switch to
The region produces over a third of the renewable energy at the plant or deploy carbon
world’s LNG, while generating 50mn tonnes per capture and storage [CCS] to reduce emissions
year (tpy) of carbon dioxide equivalent of emis- from upstream gas, or both.
sions during liquefaction. “Using less feedgas as a fuel would result in
Australian LNG projects account for over more gas being available to supply either the
half, or 29 MtCO2e, of liquefaction emissions domestic market or be converted into LNG for
from LNG projects in the Asia-Pacific. exports.
Many of the region’s LNG facilities are located “In APLNG, for example, installing 60 MW
in remote areas, far from the power grid, so feed- of solar in 2020 at a cost of $60mn increases the
gas is used to generate electricity to run the plant remaining value of the project by $62mn.
and fuel the liquefaction process. “This is due to the additional revenues gener-
Typically, 8% to 12% of feedgas is consumed ated from selling the ‘saved’ feedgas. The relative
at the plant to run these processes. benefits of installing solar are increased further
Wood Mackenzie senior specialist Jamie when a carbon tax is considered.”™
Taylor said: “Three main decarbonisation levers
could help reduce emissions at LNG plants,
namely operational efficiency, design changes
and the use of renewable energy, which could be
sourced from the grid or generated on-site.”
Feedgas is used to fuel gas turbines to gener-
ate electricity to power the plant. Replacing these
gas turbines with electricity could greatly reduce
emissions, assuming the grid power is less car-
bon intensive. The other option is to install
on-site renewable power.
“Our analysis shows that installing renewa-
ble energy generation could reduce emissions at

SOUTH ASIA

India mulls another gas price cut

POLICY INDIA is reportedly planning to reduce prices for conventional gas production to $2.39 per
for domestically produced natural gas to their mmBtu ($66.11 per 1,000 cubic metres) for the
lowest level in more than a decade, ignoring six months from April 1.
state-run producer complaints that already low The price cuts will spell something of a finan-
prices make development uneconomical. cial disaster for state-run Oil and Natural Gas
The government is set to cut prices for the Corp. (ONGC), which has repeatedly warned
six months from October 1 to $1.90-1.94 per that it cannot continue previously planned
mmBtu ($52.55-53.66 per 1,000 cubic metres), upstream developments at current prices, let
local newswire PTI reported on August 16 citing alone even lower rates.
unnamed sources. PTI reported on August 10 that ONGC was
If the government does follow through with already considering expanding its debt load to
a price cut, this will be the third consecutive meet its capital expenditure commitments.
reduction over the past year. The state-run major has been racking up
Under India’s current gas pricing system, the losses on its domestic gas production since the
central government sets prices for local pro- government introduced its gas pricing formula
duction every six months using the weighted in November 2014, the newswire’s latest report
average price of gas in hubs in the US, Canada, contends. The sources noted that ONGC had
the UK and Russia. New Delhi slashed prices advised the government that developing new gas

P4 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 33 20•August•2020