WASHINGTON: US liquefied natural gas exporters are sending tankers to Asia to fill a gap in the region’s demand as markets have tightened more-than-expected on surging consumption in China and Pakistan, and because of Australia’s struggles to ramp up production.
Benefiting from the Panama Canal expansion last year that allows bigger ships to cross from the Gulf of Mexico into the Pacific, around a dozen LNG cargoes from the United States have gone to Asia since December. Data in Thomson Reuters Eikon currently shows two LNG tankers, carrying a combined 280,000 cubic metres of gas, are currently crossing to Asia from Louisiana.
The US LNG exports are coming from Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass, Louisiana, facility that opened last year as the first US export terminal outside Alaska. They included the first-ever US shale gas going to South Korea, which arrived this month and was bought by South Korea’s private gas company SK E&S Co.
US spot natural gas costs just $3.21 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), while Asian spot LNG prices have soared over 80 per cent since June last year to almost $10 per mmBtu.
