Recently in LNG Category

Documents obtained by environmental campaign group Greenpeace under the UK's Freedom of Information Act revealed this week that the UK's biggest gas supplier, Centrica, was last year in negotiations with Qatar for a 20 year LNG import deal worth GBP30 billion ($49 billion).

With analysts increasingly speculating about the possibility of North American exports putting an end to Australia's LNG boom, at least one local player is keeping eyes firmly on the current market leader, Qatar.

"My belief is that Qatar will remain an important factor in the market for a long time," David Knox, chief executive of emerging Australian LNG producer Santos said recently. "North American volumes will probably not be as large as people envisage in the long term and will remain a relatively small proportion of global LNG demand," he told a briefing following the release of the company's annual results in Feburary.

Japan faces a dilemma. It has to balance its changed energy needs in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster with the more urgent matter of cutting its imports of Iranian crude oil to avoid being shut out of the US financial system.

Whatever the outcome of discussions with Washington on the extent of the reduction in imports from Iran, Japan faces longer term energy security issues because of its heavy reliance on Middle Eastern crude, a vulnerability that has been exposed further with recent threats by Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz.

Not everyone standing on the sidelines is cheering Australia's play to challenge Qatar as the world's largest LNG producer by the middle of this decade.

LNG is a boom industry in Australia, with eight new projects currently under construction, worth a total of more than $175 billion. The new projects will add capacity of nearly 70 million mt/year to Australia's existing LNG industry, which comprises the Woodside Petroleum-led 16.3 million mt/year North West Shelf joint venture and the 3.6 million mt/year Darwin LNG
plant, operated by ConocoPhillips.

For the first time in a decade or so, Europe can -- theoretically at least -- look forward to a relatively uninterrupted period of low-cost wholesale gas supplies. It should not be like this. Given the depressed markets, overseas sellers would be more naturally inclined to postpone their marketing plans or to cancel them outright.

With more production and transport capacity coming on stream and Europe's economies in deep recession, oversupply appears to be the way the market is heading.

Our top 10 survey this year had 37 news stories suggested as candidates for the biggest events of the year in the oil business.

There's certainly not a lot of consensus out there: 24 of those 37 stories got 1st place votes. We've never had a distribution like that in the five years we've been running this survey. Unlike last year, when Macondo stood out among all the events of 2010, or 2008, when the march to almost $150 crude and its subsequent post-Lehman Brothers collapse dominated the news, 2011 had a lot of things going on. But it didn't have that one signature story that everyone talked about, which is kind of surprising when you think about it.

Japan and South Korea initiated talks at the end of November on LNG policy that could challenge the domination of the LNG supply chain by the international oil majors and producing countries.

Indeed, the talks could be seen as setting out an outline for an eventual forum of major LNG consuming countries that would provide a counterweight to moves by gas exporting powers to exercise more control over international gas supply.