Over the last 12 months, LNG has become an increasingly important supply source for Europe. In November 2022, the LNG Large Scale terminals of the EU27 surpassed 1,000 TWh of regasified gas, which is a 75 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.
CEENERGYNEWS spoke with Arno Büx, Chief Commercial Officer of Fluxys and President of Gas LNG Europe (GLE), about the role of LNG in helping ensure the security of supply, our continent’s competitiveness compared to other markets and the potential of LNG when coupled with renewables and, especially with hydrogen.
“It is fair to say that now in 2023, even more so than before, LNG is a necessary condition for the security of supply, not a sufficient one but definitely important, as it increases uninterrupted supply to Europe,” Mr Büx begins. “Still, it needs a lot of complimentary tools, like, transport infrastructure and storage.”
Mr Büx recalls a time, before the energy crisis when we had almost a global oversupply of LNG that pushed prices down in Europe, at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The price of gas was in single digits, in a moment when we even talked about negative gas prices.
“As today, supply is scarce, we pay de facto the global price of LNG,” he explains. “There are two sides to the coin here. First of all, it is a flexible supply source hence, it has done well in responding very quickly to price signals in 2021 and even more so after the war to substitute the reduced gas supplies from Russia. Second, we had almost a full use of LNG infrastructure, bringing this market to a very mature level.”
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