DOHA: Despite a potential near term oversupply of liquefied natural gas (LNG), investment in new liquefaction projects will be crucial to avoid a possible under-supply situation in the early 2020s, cautioned RasGas Company Limited’s (RasGas) Chief Executive Officer, Hamad Mubarak Al Muhannadi, at the LNG 18 International Conference and Exhibition on Liquefied Natural Gas, in Perth, Australia.
In his speech titled, ‘The Globalisation of Gas’, Al Muhannadi examined the LNG industry’s changing market dynamics, focusing on the past decade’s rapid increase in production capacity and liquidity, and ever-growing global LNG demand.
“Worldwide, LNG production has increased to over 230 million tonnes per year, and we expect it to further increase to approximately 370 million tonnes per year by 2020 from developments under construction or projects that have reached FID,” he confirmed.
Yet the growth in demand for LNG has been as significant: “Approximately 30 countries currently import LNG, twice the number of countries importing just 10 years ago, and RasGas anticipates that the pace of growth will continue, and that many more customers and countries will be importing LNG in the next decade.”
Given this significant increase in global demand, Al Muhannadi indicated that under supply could be the market reality in the early 2020s “if no new projects are sanctioned”. More than 2,000 delegates attended the 18th International Conference and Exhibition.
