LNG

The European Commission, after many delays in imposing updated sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine invasion has now banned from its ports LNG tankers of the Russian Sovcomflot shipping line, while also convening on June 25 the first meeting of the Conference on Accession of Ukraine to the European Union.

The European Union said the emissions trading system (ETS) followed by power utilities, oil and gas companies, industry and aviation has helped reduce carbon-dioxide pollution by a record 15.5 percent in 2023 compared with the previous year.

The European Union’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) has issued its annual report on the natural gas market, including the role of liquefied natural gas, with a list of lessons learnt and future actions to be taken 18 months after the Russian supply shock began with the Ukraine invasion and prompted a major rebalancing of the markets that will have a lasting impact.

Contrary to what is suggested in the political discussions, it is hardly the price of gas that increases the price of electricity, themain driver now in the European Union and particularly in Germany is the carbon-dioxide (CO2) price that gas-fired and coal-fired power plants have to pay for their emissions. 

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.

Italian energy major Eni has delivered the first commercial liquefied natural gas shipment to the nation’s fourth import terminal at the Tuscan port of Piombino.

May 23 (LNG) – Germany is planning new interference measures in energy markets. The country’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Robert Habeck, who represents the anti-capitalist Greens party in the Social Democrat-led coalition government, plans to introduce more left-wing measures by giving €4 billion ($4.3Bln) of permanent subsidies a year to energy-intensive industries in Germany.

   However, the German Finance Ministry opposes Habeck’s interference in power and commodity markets and the current budget does not allow funds to be redirected to give subsidies to about 80 percent of Germany’s industrial sector. “This price will be calculated on the basis of the average exchange electricity price and then calculated down,” Habeck said. Analysts said that Germany was emerging as a leader of the European Union’s gradual move towards an anti-competitive grants and subsidies economy.

Energy ministers of the Group of Seven industrial nations met in the Japanese city of Sapporo on April 15-16 under the revolving chairmanship with Japan as host and issued a hodge-podge statement of aims including one pledging to back new natural gas projects but reduce fossil fuel needs over time.

The European Union is moving forward with its plan to seek pooled natural gas purchases under a programme called AggregateEU and set to be launched in June with the aim of reducing prices and increasing efficiency in fully replacing Russian pipeline gas supplies to Germany and the EU.

Energy ministers of the 27-nation European Union failed to reach an agreement at a council meeting in Brussels on imposing a maximum price for natural gas that would have impacted markets including, LNG cargo pricing and pipeline supplies from Norway.