LNG-Prices Slide, Middle East Boosts Imports
The new new supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia's Sakhalin plant and weakening demand from Egypt helped snap a months-long rally. Hence Asian spotLNG prices fell this week, reports Reuters.
Meanwhile, countries in the Middle East and North Africa led by Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco are boosting liquefied natural gas import capacity, taking advantage of low prices to meet rising energy demand, according to a Bloomberg report.
Russia's Sakhalin II plant is tendering to sell three cargoes loading in September and one in October, relieving supply constrained markets.
In Egypt, state-run Egas came out looking for eight instead of the expected 16 cargoes for delivery in Sept-Dec, further loosening outlooks for the month ahead.
However, global output during September remains somewhat constrained by planned outages at the Chevron Chevron-led Angola LNG project and Cheniere Energy's first production line at Sabine Pass - both of which will be offline for repairs and testing.
Angola LNG entered a longer-than-expected maintenance period several weeks ago. Sabine Pass maintenance will happen in September only.
ME plans to add permanent terminals and temporary, off-shore units that will increase annual capacity by 58.2 billion cubic meters in 2021, energy lender Arab Petroleum Investment Corp. said in a report.
Capacity was 39.1 billion cubic meters at the start of 2016, according to a March publication of the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers, a Paris-based industry group. Arab Petroleum didn’t provide current figures. Based on the two sets of figures, annual capacity in the region would increase to 97.3 billion cubic meters in five years.
