Shell Sees Demand Surging for Liquefied Natural Gas

www.nytimes.com

5 comments

I must admit I stopped reading after the first paragraph but it's just so exaggerated or simply false, that I don't see the value in spending more time on such an article.
Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, forecast on Wednesday that global demand for liquefied natural gas, which has been a lifeline for Europe after Russia cut off pipeline gas supplies, will surge by around 50 percent over the next 15 years.
LNG is not a lifeline. A pipeline could be labelled like that, but LNG is a globally traded good supplied by dozens of countries.
Russia did not cut off natural gas supplies, they even supply now throughout their illegal war, towards countries that support Ukraine.
50% increase over 15 years is not a 'surge', but more a slow and steady increase.
- Russia did not cut off natural gas supplies, they even supply now throughout their illegal war, towards countries that support Ukraine.
  Russia did cut off Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Italy, France and Denmark. So the sentence is technically correct. They cut off gas supplies, just not to every European country.
  
  I read that paragraph on Wikipedia but fail to see your statements. Italy, Denmark, France aren't even mentioned there.
  In detail it's described that Poland stopped paying Russia, so Russia stopped pumping gas via the Yamal pipeline to Poland. That is not 'cutting-off'. Also Poland kept receiving natural gas from Russia via Nord Stream, via Germany and over to Poland during summer 2022. Yamal was running in reverse and supplying Poland, so that they even hit over 100% storage at that time. For Finland it's similar - they stopped paying, so Russia stopped delivering.
  Even today Russia supplies EU countries with natural gas, which is also part of the storage and supply calculation within the EU. What if Russia stops delivering tomorrow? How can these countries be supplied in such a scenario? Russia still has some leverage over a few countries, e.g. Austria via long-term contracts, where Austria stated not honouring the contracts from their side, would be more expensive that taking the natural gas.
Shell knows that by pretending gas will be needed in the future, governments will support gas infrastructure, which turns it into a self for filling prophecy.
Anyway looking at the report, it seems rather odd to me. Gas demand in the EU is supposed to be stable, besides massive built up in renewable generation and even more importantly record heat pump sales, with laws phasing out gas boilers in multiple countries. Most EU countries already phased out coal electricity production and I doubt that will grow any day soon.
China is not going to be dependent on the US and Australia for LNG. They are not that dumb.
Japan and South Korea have falling populations so energy demand will shrink. Japan is restarting its nuclear power plants, which should reduce coal consumption a lot and lead to lower gas consumption.