upsidedown schreef op 29 augustus 2021 19:24:
“Five to 10 years ago, it was really immature,” said Alex Lee, managing director of Connexus. “Now we see LNG become a much more of a traded commodity, like oil, like metals, as the market becomes more liquid.”
Slower growth in the oil trading business is pushing the trading houses into gas. The biggest energy commodity traders now trade twice or even triple the amount of oil they did a decade ago, but their earnings have remained largely flat as the margin per barrel narrowed.
The oil business remains gigantic, with annual physical crude deliveries of at least $2.3 trillion. LNG is enjoying more rapid growth with about $150 billion in revenue last year, according to McKinsey Energy Insights. By next year, LNG volumes will be more than triple what they were at the start of the century, making it the quickest-growing segment of the fossil-fuel industry, according to Shell.
The biggest reason for the expansion: tighter curbs on pollution have pushed power generators toward cleaner fuels.
“We are spending a lot of resources on developing our gas and LNG business,’’ said Gunvor CEO Torbjorn Tornqvist. “In any realistic scenario for cleaner fuel oil, you can’t bypass gas to replace the more polluting sources.’’
Several other factors are making LNG’s expansion possible:
*New supplies are coming on-stream from Russia’s Arctic region to the U.S. Gulf Coast, both of which exported their first cargoes within the past three years.
*China, seeking to clean up its smoggy skies, is expected to double its demand for the fuel in the next two decades.
*Highly-populated nations including India and Bangladesh are likely to add to demand, according to Shell.
*The cost of LNG has plunged, putting its price within reach of more potential customers.
*New technology, such as floating production plants and receiving terminals and more advanced ships, has also made the expansion of LNG trading easier.
They’re harnessing a boom in demand in places that are far from pipelines, especially Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Europe also is absorbing more LNG to diversify its imports away from Russia. The advantage is that buyers can start taking cargoes without building a major link costing billions of dollars that crosses national borders. While buyers still need an terminal to turn LNG back into gas, that comes at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated pipeline.
“It’s a general trend, not for Trafigura and Vitol, but for everyone — gas is going to have an increased share in energy,” said Bart Riemens, head of gas trading at the Swiss utility Axpo Group. “LNG is the fastest growing commodity, secondary only to renewables.”
------
Ja nee lng toekomst ziet er goed uit. En toch nog een koers tussen 16 en 17,50 euro van shell de laatste maanden. Als er geen mutatie vh corona-virus opduikt moet de koers toch nog wel door de 18 gaan dit jaar?