“Asia is going to be the engine room for LNG growth,” Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill said.
LNG – natural gas super-chilled down to a liquid so it can be loaded onto special ships – is one of Australia’s biggest exports, raking in at least $64 billion in revenue this financial year. Demand and prices for Australia’s LNG, which is mainly sold to Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea, surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as efforts to replace Russian piped gas to Europe unleashed a global scramble for spare shipments of the fuel to keep lights and heaters on.
“China is significantly increasing its LNG import capacity and aims to add piped gas connections for 150 million people by 2030 to meet increasing demand,” Shell said. “India is also moving ahead with building natural gas infrastructure and adding gas connections to 30 million people over the next five years.”
“If just 20 per cent of Asia’s coal-fired power stations switched to gas, it would reduce carbon emissions by 680 million tonnes a year,” O’Neill said. “That’s more than 1½ times Australia’s annual net greenhouse gas emissions.”
“We expect a tight LNG market in 2025 with global balances estimated to be in deficit … before moving into balance in 2026 and an accelerating surplus from 2027,” UBS analyst Tom Allen said.
