Arias Canete expands on EU LNG strategy

OREANDA-NEWS. April 24, 2015. The EU will present a strategy early in 2016 to make it a "more attractive market" for LNG, EU climate and energy commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said today.

"European LNG imports almost halved between 2011 and 2014. The EU has effectively become a residual market, getting what Asian countries do not need or cannot afford", he said. "That needs to change."

Europe has functioned as a balancing market for the global LNG trade over the last six years. In 2009-11, the region absorbed LNG from new liquefaction capacity, particularly in Qatar, that had been intended to supply the US, but was displaced from that market by rising shale gas output. But from late 2011 the amount of LNG arriving in Europe fell away sharply, as Japan's imports rocketed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and as demand grew elsewhere in Asia-Pacific and in Latin America. That said, receipts have rebounded substantially so far this year, as new liquefaction capacity in Asia-Pacific has displaced swing supply from the Pacific basin.

Arias Canete said that the EU plans to develop a strategy to make Europe a more attractive market for LNG from countries such as Algeria, Nigeria and Qatar, and that the EU will step up its energy diplomacy with suppliers and transit countries. Although he clarified that the EU will continue to "take a market-based approach wherever possible".

"When we are talking about our energy diplomacy, it is about creating a political framework for the industry to invest in new and potentially difficult projects," he said.

Arias Canete plans to visit Algeria in May, and later Egypt. The EU will also try to remove obstacles to LNG imports from the US, he said.

By volume, just over half of the export licences granted to US LNG projects allow shipments to countries with which it has a free trade agreement. EU officials have called for a dedicated energy chapter in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated with the US, and are lobbying for export licences to the EU to be automatic.