India and South Africa among those eyeing LNG
The demand for natural gas and liquefied natural gas is a positive indicator that the industry’s future is bright—and growing brighter beyond our nation’s borders.
India’s plans to more than double the share that natural gas has in its energy mix, from 6.5 percent to 15 percent by 2022, will require a large increase in imports and in planned construction of LNG terminals, a government official noted in a recent news story by Reuters.
Currently, India has four terminals to receive LNG and imports around 20 million tons of LNG annually. The government plans to build at least another 11 terminals during the next seven years, said Narendra Taneja, spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
If that comes to pass, India’s LNG import capacity will climb to more than 70 million tons per year in the coming seven years—making it one of the fastest gas-import expansions since China embarked on a large gasification program last year, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, South Africa is poised to become a major market for U.S. natural gas as it undergoes an energy transition, thanks to the Paris Climate Agreement.
A new report from the Energy Information Administration says that demand for natural gas will rise as South Africa works to dethrone itself as the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions on the African continent.
Like China, South Africa is a big consumer of coal for making electricity, and coal reserves have been used to power its economy.
“Over the next five years, South Africa plans to replace some of its outdated coal-fired capacity with nearly 10 gigawatts of supercritical coal units, which are more efficient because they operate at higher temperatures and pressures than conventional coal power plants,” the report said.
The country also plans to add more generating capacity fueled by natural gas and renewable energy by 2030, according to the EIA.
Meanwhile, another international player—Japan—hit its highest level of imported LNG in at least five years this past winter after an unusual cold snap.
Japan’s imports of LNG were up 8 percent from December 2017 to January 2018, according to ship-tracking data on Thomson Reuters Eikon that stretches back five years.
