LNG

Oct 28 (LNGJ) - Wärtsilä has launched a new LNG storage and regasification barge concept, called Mobile LNG solution that allows offtakers to meet small to medium scale requirements where pure land-based LNG options are limited. Presenting the solution at Gastech in Singapore, Wärtsilä says it can be combined with a barge-mounted power plant of up to 250 MW. Alternatively, the LNG deliveries can be used to supply conventional land-based power plants.

A supply gap is likely to open up by the end of the decade and to prevent this, the industry should reduce costs of liquefaction, e.g. through small FLNG units, suggests Philip Olivier, CEO of ENGIE Global LNG.

Rebuking criticism of the oil&gas industry, BG's chief executive Helge Lund has called for "courage to continue investing in difficult times," while ensuring shorter cash-flow returns. "Otherwise we're simply setting ourselves up for the next boom," he said at the Gastech opening in Singapore today.

LNG buyers and sellers in Singapore will soon be able to trade gas domestically at a secondary market, allowing power producers to hedge their gas imports and rely less on oil-indexed contracts.

Exports of US LNG to Europe will not be a game changer so "I see us more as a price taker in Europe," Charif Souki, chairman and CEO of Cheniere Energy said, suggesting Russian gas will continue to dominate much of the region.

Despite the fall in global oil and gas prices, growth of LNG use in Asia's power sector is limited by coal. "Only very competitively priced LNG has a chance to beat coal in Asia," the International Energy Agency's (IEA) executive director Dr Fatih Birol told the Singapore Energy Week today.

Though Shell's acquisition of BG is creating the world's largest LNG seller, Wood Mackenzie believes that regardless of the Tepco/Chubu merger, the buy-side is getting more fragmented.

Project developer Octopus LNG SpA is advancing Chile's first FSRU project that will regasify LNG for power generators and industrial users through its project Terminal GNL Penco-Lirquen.

Aug 28 - Exports of Atlantic Basin LNG increased 2% in July, compared with the same month a year earlier, according to Eclipse Energy data. Aggregate exports from liquefaction plants in Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Norway and Trinidad and Tobago rose to 6.46 Bcm of gas equivalent from 6.36 Bcm in July 2014. No LNG was exported from Angola during that period.

Edging closer to FID, Anadarko Petroleum said it has sealed around 90% of the heads of agreements for LNG offtake from its Mozambique LNG project. FID now hinges on how quickly the developers can get government approval.