BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec.20. For 2022 as a whole, Europe is likely to import some 164 Bcm of LNG, up over 60 Bcm on 2021, Trend reports with reference to Oxford Institute of Energy Studies (OIES).
“While global LNG supply increased during 2022, Europe attracted significant volumes of LNG away from Asia and South America, benefitting from the fact that China’s gas demand in 2022 was very weak and LNG imports fell sharply. In the last quarter of 2022, Europe is likely to have imported around 45 Bcm of LNG, some 15 Bcm higher than Q4 in 2021. The mild weather, until recently, and the high levels of gas in storage have enabled European gas markets to get by with vastly reduced flows of gas from Russia. 2023, however, may be much more challenging in terms of replacing Russian gas by importing more LNG than in 2022,” reads the latest OIES report.
The report reveals that while not many new plants are starting up in 2023, the growth is largely due to the ramp up of new plants in that were launched in 2022 and the removal of technical issues that plagued facilities in 2022 – Norway and Freeport LNG in the US being the main contributors.
“An increase of 35 Bcm implies an average 3 Bcm per month extra, although in Q1 2023 the extra supply may only be some 2 Bcm a month, of which half is expected to come from Freeport restarting, compared to Q4 2022 (i.e., a quarter-on-quarter increase).
In Q1 2022, Europe imported 43 Bcm, almost as much as in Q4 2022, so increasing supply above last year to offset significantly lower Russian flows may be problematic. European industrial demand is running at much lower levels and storage withdrawals can probably be used to offset any weakness in supply from elsewhere. That, however, would require storage to be refilled in summer 2023, again relying on LNG imports,” reads the report.
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