The United States is preparing to do a big business with the export of natural gas. The country is accelerating the start-up of some of its main regasification infrastructures to increase its sales volume.
According to data from Gasindustrial, the price of LNG that arrives from the United States to Spain is paid 40% more expensive than that received from Russia. Specifically, US gas cost an average of 53.88 euros/MWh while that from Russia cost 38.42 euros/MWh.
There are currently seven major export facilities in the United States. Sabine Pass of Cheniere Energy in Louisiana; Cove Point Liquefaction in Maryland, now operated by Berkshire Hathaway; Corpus Christi Liquefaction, of Cheniere, Texas; Cameron LNG, of Sempra Energy, in Louisiana; Elba Liquefaction of Kinder Morgan in Georgia; Freeport LNG, in Texas and Calcasieu Pass, from Venture Global.
Cheniere Partners, owner of the Sabine Pass LNG terminal, has put its sixth liquefaction train into operation. At the same time, Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass plant has also started supplying LNG and last December, the company and Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards announced that another $10 billion will be invested to develop a new CP2 LNG facility.
In Spain, this February the arrival of a total of 27 LNG ships is scheduled, of which 23 have already unloaded. The remaining 4 are expected to do so in the remainder of the month.
For March, Enagás’ programming includes 29 unloading slots, but as a preventive measure, it has been decided to launch today the auction of another 4 extraordinary slots, which will be destined both for domestic demand and for export. This auction will take place next Monday.
Shipping from Spain
Spain has been sending gas to central Europe for 6 days to try to deal with a possible supply cut by Russia, as announced today elEconomista.es.
The Spanish gas system receives gas from Algeria through the Medgaz gas pipeline, which is operating normally and whose capacity has increased thanks to the expansion of said gas pipeline since last January 2nd.
Currently, the system has higher levels of contracted capacity than in previous winters on the same date, and is in a better situation than that of other surrounding countries after the Government tightened the so-called winter plan.
With the current situation and with the slot and capacity reservations already made by marketers, Enagas considers that there are no objective signs of a situation of lack of gas supply in the coming months. However, the system’s technical manager maintains continuous monitoring of gas supplies and reserves to identify any extraordinary unloading slot that may be made available to the market.
vital tool
The supply from the United States thus becomes a vital tool against Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. In fact, the Polish company PGNiG has bought a shipment of US LNG to be supplied at the Ukrainian border to ERU Europe. This will be the second time that US gas has been supplied to Ukraine thanks to the cooperation of both companies.
The ship with the American LNG will arrive at the Presidente Lech Kaczynski LNG Terminal in Swinoujscie at the end of February, predictably with a Spanish ship. After regasification, the fuel will be introduced into the Polish transportation system. ERU Europe will receive the fuel on the interconnection between Poland and Ukraine until the end of March.
Ukraine, for its part, is allowing gas to continue transiting from Russia to the heart of Europe in a move that seems pointless, since it allows financing its enemy. In fact, Gazprom’s gas nominations for tomorrow have increased.
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