Qatar on Tuesday secured its second large gas supply deal with a Chinese state-controlled company in less than a year, putting Asia clearly ahead in the race to secure gas supplies from Doha's massive production expansion project.
Russia's largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) Novatek last year offered technology to build a plant to produce the gas from Argentina's Vaca Muerta field, a highly-placed source familiar with the proposal said, though the talks have since broken off.
Venture Global LNG, which is building three multi-billion dollar U.S. liquefied natural gas processing plants, is sparring with two customers of its first project over mechanical failures that have prevented commercial deliveries a year after initial shipments began.
An ongoing heatwave in China is boosting power demand for cooling, but tepid industrial demand and record high coal inventories are keeping prices at two-year lows and limiting spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.
Europe’s gas storage is refilling much more slowly than usual as the drop in prices encourages more consumption by industrial users and power generators while diverting liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes to Asia.