SINGAPORE: Asian spot liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices fell this week amid weak seasonal demand and ample supply, traders said.
Traders also were awaiting the outcome of a tender for two cargoes loading in June from Australia’s Northwest Shelf project, which could affect spot prices. The result was expected later yesterday or early next week.
Asian spot prices for June loading eased to around $14.40 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) this week, from around $14.85 last week, traders said.
“Most Japanese buyers have covered their demand for June,” a trader said. Exxon Mobil expects to ship its first cargo of LNG from its Papua New Guinea project “in coming weeks”, the company said this week.
A industry source said the company might have sold up to three spot cargoes from its new plant, which has a capacity of 6.9 million tonnes per year.
The Gaslog Chelsea LNG tanker with a capacity of 153,000 cubic metres was expected to arrive at the plant near Port Moresby in the coming days, according to Reuters iMap.
Angola’s new LNG export plant has been forced to shut again due to unspecified technical problems, and it was unclear when production would resume.
The $10bn plant, operated by Chevron, has struggled since starting up last year due to setbacks including a compressor leak, a rig capsize, electrical fires and pipeline leaks.
“We don’t expect this outage to affect spot prices too much in the next month. However, as the summer months approach and we go back into the peak demand season, we could see higher-than-expected spot prices,” analysts at Waterborne Energy Inc said in a note.
BG Group said this week it expected “very limited cargoes” from its Egyptian LNG project in the foreseeable future, with no cargoes in the first quarter and only one cargo in the second quarter.
“Future commercial operation of Egyptian LNG is increasingly at risk”, due to high level of diversions to the domestic market and deteriorating reservoir performance, BG Group said in its quarterly results.
ConocoPhillips plans one LNG shipment from Kenai in Alaska this month and has contracts to export another six cargoes this year, a company executive said.
Meanwhile, Kuwait is ramping up LNG imports after receiving its first shipment in March. The LNG Lakoja tanker is due to arrive in Kuwait’s Mina Al Ahmadi terminal on May 5 from Nigeria to deliver the country’s fourth LNG cargo, according to Reuters data.
Indian gas importer Petronet LNG signed a deal to buy 800,000 tonnes of LNG from Qatar’s RasGas in the fiscal year that began on April 1, a company source said.
The gas will be shipped to Petronet’s 10 million tonne-a-year Dahej regasification terminal in western India and comes in addition to an existing long-term deal to buy 7.5 million tonnes a year from RasGas.
Reuters
