The expert told who Europe “threw” in the gas battle

MOSCOW, August 30 – PRIME. The global energy crisis, fueled by record high energy prices and raw material shortages, will affect countries other than the ones that attract the most public attention. While the countries of Europe are stockpiling raw materials to the extent of their capabilities on the eve of the heating period, poor countries that have no money to pay at the fantastic prices of an overheated market and who are frankly “thrown” by business partners are left without raw materials supplies, a leading analyst at the National Energy Fund told Prime. security (FNEB) Igor Yushkov.

“There are currently no new sources of natural gas or LNG on the world market. Europeans are already buying up the maximum possible: LNG terminals operate at maximum capacity, supplies from Russia are limited for objective reasons. New liquefied natural gas plants will appear no earlier than in 2025 -2030, mainly in the US and Qatar.The Americans promise that from November they will start the affected Texas Freeport LNG plant at 80% of maximum capacity.But again, this plant will return to the operating mode at the beginning of the year, these are not new volumes of raw materials on the market,” Yushkov explained.

He added that Canadians are not a significant exporter of LNG, so when the German authorities go to negotiate on the supply of liquefied natural gas with Canada, it looks strange. Germany currently does not have a single operating LNG terminal, and Canada does not have such a volume of LNG to supply it for export.

“Europe can completely abandon Russian gas only if it somehow drastically decreases the volume of gas consumption. Then yes, and then, probably, not in the heating season. If demand dies, then you can refuse Russian gas due to deindustrialization,” the interlocutor added.

As for Asian consumers, they have been modest in terms of gas imports for quite a long time, especially China, whose industry was up because of the coronavirus, which caused energy consumption to fall. For most of this year, they did not compete for LNG. “Then, when energy consumption began to grow after the lockdown, Beijing began to increase the purchase of coal and its own production of this mineral. Therefore, they do not compete so much for gas – because they switched to coal. They did not fight for LNG, including because that it is now very expensive,” the representative of the FNEB added.

India tried to compete in the LNG market, but it was frankly abandoned, the expert noted and cited as an example the situation when Germany nationalized Gazprom Germania, a subsidiary of which was supposed to supply gas to India under contracts. The German partners preferred to pay a penalty to India for non-delivery of raw materials, realizing that they could earn more on European markets.

“China, India, Japan and South Korea – the largest consumers of LNG in Asia – are trying to build up stocks, so prices in the region are also growing, but so far remain below European ones,” the specialist added.

Because of this, poor countries suffer, which either cannot buy – they simply do not have the money to buy at the new prices. Or they – like Pakistan or India – are frankly “thrown”, redirecting raw materials already reserved by contracts to the marginal European market. And now they will simply have nowhere to get gas from, summed up Yushkov.