Vision of Liquefied Natural Gas Hub

Deck: 

Mirage on the Ocean?

Fortnightly Magazine - November 2016
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

The United States is poised to become one of the largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, LNG, in the world.

Industry press reports claim players expect that U.S. gas is about to change the global LNG market forever, fueling European gas-fired power plants in the near future.

Indeed, as of June 2016, FERC had approved converting eight abandoned LNG import terminals into export terminals. Five were under construction at the time. Fourteen more proposals are under review or are in the pre-filing stage.

Several facilities are already proposing expansions to their original projects. The entry of the U.S. as a major exporter in the market will definitely have an effect on LNG world trade.

However, the vision for U.S. LNG exports to spark a true commodity market, like oil, does not take into account the unique features in regulatory and cost structures that fog that vision.

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.