Editor:
How can Fortis even think of shipping overseas?
Here is data from 2020 Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:
The finances of PetroChina, the Asian nation’s largest state-owned natural gas company and its top gas importer, reveal the company realized substantial losses from gas imports every year from 2015 through 2019.
To justify expansion of imports, China would likely need to secure long-term LNG supplies at prices well under $7/MMBtu. Those prices would leave U.S. LNG exports out of the money in many market conditions and would certainly limit any upside profits for U.S. exports.
Low citygate gas prices in China similarly limit the profitability of U.S. LNG exports to China. These forces — along with other structural and infrastructure constraints in China and globally — will create substantial headwinds for a China-led resurgence for the U.S. LNG industry.
Moving forward, U.S. LNG developers would be wise to pay close attention to the cost and price pressures that bedevil Asian gas markets. Bullish demand projections for LNG demand in China and Southeast Asia tend to ignore the price sensitivity of these markets, as well as the many logistical, economic, and political obstacles to the development of LNG and gas infrastructure. The most optimistic LNG demand scenarios are simply unrecognizable to experienced analysts of the Chinese energy.
Guess who will be paying to subsidize this. Yup, we the taxpayer.
Phyllis Ruthven
