LNG

European liquefied natural gas price benchmarks and Asian spot cargo margins dropped to under $1 per million British thermal units as over-supply compared with the past two-and-a-half years and mild weather offset global shipping security and navigation issues from Suez to Panama.

European and Asian LNG cargo prices and natural gas pipeline values remained high even as the Nord Stream I pipeline re-opened on schedule after maintenance, restoring the main Russian gas connection to the European Union, though failing to alleviate long-term gas market supply concerns.

Höegh LNG Holdings, the leading floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) operator with 10 modern vessels, has appointment Erik Nyheim as new President and Chief Executive effective from mid-August.

European and Asian liquefied natural gas prices lost their traction for April and May as they slipped by more than 30 percent on the week with demand being less than expected as the Northern Hemisphere winter season approaches its end amid steady cargo supplies in a market still focused on the Ukraine crisis.

Australian exports of liquefied natural gas hit a record high in 2021 to keep the nation in the World No. 1 spot of global exporters from its 10 liquefaction plants in the East and West coasts and in the Northern Territory.

Malaysia and Bangladesh have signed an accord to move towards the Bangladeshis becoming importers of Malaysian liquefied natural gas as other regasification facilities are considered in addition to the floating terminals already operating in the Bay of Bengal.

The prices of liquefied natural gas on global markets increased to their highest in 2021 in Europe while the spot LNG cargo price for North Asia rose over the $13.00 per million British thermal units level amid oil market concern about US supplies as the differential between North Sea Brent crude and US oil narrowed to well under a dollar.

Sakhalin Energy, the operator of the Sakhalin II LNG plant in the Russian Far East supplying four North Asian nations, has started scheduled maintenance at infrastructure facilities and is hopeful of having minimum disruption to exports despite changing loading arms.

“Around 2,500 technical staff from various regions of Russia will be engaged in operations at the facilities,” explained Roman Dashkov, Chief Executive of Sakhalin Energy.

“As part of the shutdown, for the first time in Russia, there will be a replacement of loading arms performed at the LNG jetty of the liquefaction plant,” said the CEO.

The Sakhalin plant has been on stream since 2009 and last year prodcued 10.8 million tonnes of lNG.

However, the joint venture run by Russian natural gas company Gazprom has yet to progress on construction of a long-promised third liquefaction Train at Prigorodnoye on Sakhalin Island.

The main shareholders in the plant are Gazprom with 50 percent, Royal Dutch Shell with 27.5 percent and Japanese company Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi with 12.5 percent and 10 percent respectively.

In the past year the Japanese have taken delivery of 51.6 percent of Sakhalin volumes, a further 17.4 percent was shipped to Taiwan, 16.3 percent to South Korea and 14.1 percent to China.

Since the start-up of the plant, Sakhalin Energy has produced and shipped about 130 million tonnes of LNG as of early May 2021 and more than 2,000 cargoes.

The company said that the Russian plant had already begun the maintenance campaign on the PA-B plant, the largest oil and gas production platform of the Sakhalin project.

The PA-B platform is located about 12 kilometres offshore the northeast of the island in waters depths of 32 metres.

“At the platform, it is intended to perform an annual purging of the hydrocarbon multiphase flow separation vessels, a repair of the produced water filters, maintenance of two gas compressors, including a gearbox inspection at one of them, and a number of other maintenance tasks,” explained the company.

The workers would then proceed with the scheduled shutdown of the facilities in the integrated gas chain, including the LUN-A platform.

The Sakhalin maintenance programme is expected to be completed by the start of July.

Australian LNG shipments to North Asia from the world's largest exporter hit record levels for some nations in March and revenues increased from the previous month, led by Chinese demand for cargoes.

PetroChina, the Hong Kong-listed affiliate of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., recorded a 6 percent increase in annual revenues to 2,520 billion Chinese yuan ($350.8Bln) but net profits fell 14 percent and it disclosed plans to renegotiate some natural gas supply contracts to improve profitability.