ASSESSMENTS

U.S. LNG Exports Are About to Reshape the Global Market

Nov 8, 2018 | 20:49 GMT

Storage tanks for liquefied natural gas sit in a large oil-refinery plant

(COR LAFFRA/Shutterstock)

Highlights

By the end of 2019, the United States will become one of the world's three largest exporters of liquefied natural gas.
Qatar, which has been the globe's biggest LNG producer until now, will begin implementing a more aggressive strategy next year in the face of competition from the United States and Australia.
U.S. trading partners could promise to purchase American LNG as a way to reduce their trade surpluses.
China is unlikely to purchase LNG from the United States because of their trade war, choosing instead to buy Russian gas from Siberia.
The United States will ramp up its pressure on the European Union to buy more U.S. LNG and to improve its infrastructure so it can reduce the bloc's reliance on Russian energy.

The U.S. shale revolution has had a major impact at home, but its echoes have reverberated less elsewhere around the world, at least where natural gas is concerned. That, however, is about to change. By the end of 2018, the United States will launch nine liquefied natural gas export projects that will have a collective liquefaction capacity of 36.7 million tonnes per annum (mtpa). The expansion will boost the country's capacity to roughly 63 mtpa -- a big step up from the mere 1.5 mtpa that existed before 2016. It all adds up to a big year in 2019. And growth in U.S. LNG exports will continue beyond that because more processing and liquefaction facilities are expected to come online the following year. Producers are also considering additional final investment decisions to construct new facilities beyond that. The consequences of rising U.S. -- as well as Australian -- LNG exports...

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