Europe’s LNG buyers keep their eyes peeled on cargoes from the United States as regas capacity in the EU-27 is on track to expand to 29.3 Bcf/d in 2024, a rise of more than one-third compared with 2021. Shipments of American super-chilled gas account for nearly half of Europe’s and the UK’s total LNG imports, according to CEDIGAZ data.
Strikingly, the market share of US LNG across the Atlantic almost tripled from 2.4 Bcf/d, or 27 percent in 2021 to over 6.5 Bcf/d, or 44 percent in 2022 on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and increased yet again last year to 7.1 Bcf/d, or 48 percent of total imports.
Reacting to the near-halt in contractual Russian pipeline gas supplies, north-western European countries rushed to realise dormant LNG expansion projects or developed new terminals: In Germany, developers rushed to build 1.8 Bcf/d of regas capacity in 2023 and plan to add a further 1.6 Bcf/d in 2024. The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Finland and France, meanwhile, increased their regasification capacity by a combined 3.2 Bcf/d over the past two years.
Though LNG imports to Europe set fresh records June 2022 through April 2023, when shipments peaked 18.1 Bcf/d, demand over the second half of last year remained fairly unchanged – despite an estimated 4.2 Bcf/d of regas capacity additions. Mild winter weather and energy conservation measures lowered demand and made Europe end the winter season with record-high gas in storage.
