LNG

The European Union may face pipeline natural gas supply issues again this winter because of a military conflict, this time by Azerbaijan against the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Asian liquefied natural gas spot prices dropped as cargo liftings increased while the European Union wholesale gas benchmark declined for a fourth week to just over $10 per million British thermal units exactly one year after hitting more than $50 per MMBtu.

Demark, one of the few European Union members in northwest Europe without LNG import infrastructure, said the nation’s consumption of natural gas fell by 29 percent last year and contributed to overall energy consumption falling by 1.5 percent as the nation improved its energy self-sufficiency.

Intercontinental Exchange, the leading global provider of energy trading platforms for futures and options, reported record Open Interest across its global commodity and energy futures and options markets, including European natural gas and with record volumes also seen in oil options.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has visited Algeria on her first foreign trip since taking office, signed four accords with the North African nation, including one on a new natural gas pipeline between Algeria and Italy.

The European Union’s Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson is in Algeria for two days of talks on strengthening the EU’s energy cooperation with the Algerians after the failure of an EU summit last week to agree a natural gas price cap that would have affected LNG trading.

Japan, which was receiving an LNG cargo from Russia on May 9, said it would gradually phase out Russian oil imports as part of a Group of Seven sanctions response to the invasion of Ukraine, though would retain its stakes in certain joint ventures, including the Sakhalin LNG and oil projects in the Russian Far East.

Enagás, the Spanish gas grid and LNG terminals operator as well as a shareholder in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), said the US was its main liquefied natural gas supplier in the first quarter followed by Algeria and Nigeria as LNG deliveries increased substantially and European Union gas supplies became tight.

North Asian liquefied natural gas spot prices were overshadowed by a renewed surge in the Dutch Title Transfer Facility wholesale futures price to over $40 per million British thermal units while US Gulf Coast prices jumped because of the new politically fixed supply line to Europe.

TotalEnergies, the leading European oil and gas company and liquefied natural gas developer in Africa and elsewhere, has been forced to defend itself against wild allegations over its business role in Russian LNG and energy.