Asia’s LNG bottleneck (part 2)
DEEP DIVE: Infrastructure constraints threaten to rain on the Asian LNG parade
South-east Asia is enjoying a moment in the global energy spotlight.
With the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) in full swing, the International Energy Agency cut the ribbon on its first regional office in the city-state.
The Paris-based agency also released its annual South-east Asia Regional Energy Outlook detailing the “dynamism” of the region and its growing influence over global markets.
Joseph McMonigle, secretary general of the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum (IEF), talked up “the necessity of integrating natural gas into future energy strategies” in a keynote address.
McMonigle was one of the many “gas cheerleaders”, as Bloomberg’s Sing Yee Ong put it, assembled at SIEW.
Everybody in the industry is popping champagne corks in anticipation of booming demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG). But nobody, it seems, is talking about the risk of infrastructure capacity constraining demand growth in parts of emerging Asia this decade.
This post is the second instalment of a two-part Deep-Dive examining the very high failure rate of LNG terminal projects in South and South-east Asia, in the context of the LNG industry’s growth ambitions.
Part one of this mini-series, which sets the scene and explains the methodology for analysing terminal project attrition rates, is available here.
Part two (this post) identifies four key countries where bottlenecks are most likely to emerge, the factors driving cancellations, and the scope for addressing them before the global LNG market tips into structural oversupply.
This second instalment is even longer than the first, and is packed with fresh datavis. Best viewed on the Energy Flux website — click here to open in your browser.
ARTICLE STATS: 4,000 words, 18-min reading time, 12 original charts and graphs
LNG’s tarnished reputation
If I had to summarise in one sentence why LNG infrastructure is hard to build in emerging Asia, it would be this: