As the nuclear industry freezes, Liquefied Natural Gas exports expand
In the big league of LNG exporting, Qatar holds the top spot, which according to Corbeau, has expanded its production to 105bnm3 in the last two years, with Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia being other significant players….
Nuclear freeze heats up LNG markets, Industrial Fuels and Power, September 16th, 2011 by Ian McInnes With world opinion cooling towards nuclear power after Fukushima, LNG markets could benefit from the recent slowdown in nuclear capacity expansion. IFandP tracks the latest developments in the LNG market.
As the world watched Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on live TV, people and governments started to think hard and quickly about the consequences of a damaged nuclear power station and just how difficult and dangerous it is to get control of a major incident. Germany has now said that it will close its nuclear plants by 2022 with other countries slowing down or cancelling nuclear power programmes. For others like the US, France and the UK, nuclear power, which has always been a bit of political hot potato, has become considerably hotter. The only quick feasible way to replace nuclear power output in the short- to medium term is likely to be with coal, natural gas or, if pipelines are not in place, liquid natural gas (LNG). For speed, LNG may be the first selection of those nations with little choice.
Impact of a nuclear-LNG switch
For Japan in particular, LNG is now vital. According to figures recently released by the Federation of Electric Power Companies (FEPC), Japanese regional power authorities imported 5.28Mt of LNG in August 2011, an increase of 23.5% over the same month in 2010. And the desire and necessity of LNG imports for Japan is unlikely to cease anytime soon as more nuclear plants are taken offline. Reports by Bloomberg say that some 41 nuclear reactors out of a total of 54 in the country are currently offline at the end of August 2011, mostly because of the effects of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Japan, up until recently, when it was overtaken by China, was the world’s second-largest economy and, without power, the nation could slip further. …..
LNG exporters
In the big league of LNG exporting, Qatar holds the top spot, which according to Corbeau, has expanded its production to 105bnm3 in the last two years, with Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia being other significant players…….
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