Gas Trading News

Damage to the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Europe was caused by powerful explosions, Danish police said on Tuesday, echoing earlier findings into leaks that erupted in the network under the Baltic Sea and that have been blamed on sabotage.In what a Swedish newspaper described as the first publicly released footage of damage to the system, film from a private drone appeared to show a gaping rupture in one pipe. Expressen reported a 50-meter section missing from one area of pipeline.Dwindling flows of gas from Russia…

China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) has awarded 16 billion yuan ($2.42 billion) worth of contracts to build 12 liquefied natural gas tankers, the largest of their kind in the country, the company said on Thursday.China is the world's largest buyer of the super-chilled gas, while CNOOC is the country's largest importer of the fuel and among the state majors leading a drive to expand their LNG fleet to meet rising import needs and facilitate fast-growing global trade.

Chinese state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) has led the first group purchasing order for liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange, the bourse said in a statement on Wednesday.The 120,000-tonne LNG cargo will arrive in April 2021 via CNOOC's terminals and other approved hubs in Shenzhen and Guangdong, the exchange said. Buyers will have until the end of September to collect their purchases.The exchange's newly launched group purchasing option for LNG buy tenders allows smaller firms to purchase portions of a larger cargo.

Energy trader Gunvor Group returned to profit in 2019 after its first net loss a year earlier, helped by record earnings in its U.S. division, and said business so far in 2020 remained strong.The Geneva-based firm, which reported a 2019 net profit of $381 million after a loss of $330 million in 2018, said on Tuesday it was also helped last year by earnings from gas trading and its European refining business.But the group, one of the world's top five oil traders, said revenue dipped to $75 billion in 2019 from $87 billion in 2018.Gunvor, which launched its U.S.

French shipping company Spanish energy giant Repsol have reached an agreement for the extension of the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the ferry operator’s Spanish operations.Repsol will supply LNG to Brittany Ferries’ operations in Spain. Under the agreement, the energy company will build two LNG bunker terminals at the ports of Bilbao and Santander, where Brittany Ferries conducts its Spanish operations.Each terminal will include an intermediate storage tank of 1,000 m3 to guarantee an uninterrupted supply.Repsol will supply LNG bunker fuel to Brittany Ferries’ Salamanca and Santoña during the ships’ regular visits on routes linking Portsmouth, UK and northern Spain, beginning in 2022.

Singapore-based owner of gas carriers BW LPG has established a product services division in an effort to support its core shipping business.The  Product Services division is part of BW LPG’s ambition to propose a low-risk and fully-integrated product delivery service to customers.The owner and operator of LPG vessels will purchase LPG and offer it delivered on the basis of cost, insurance and freight, directly to the end user.Through this new division, BW LPG aims to maximise utilisation of its vessels by providing full LPG delivery service, including product, while remaining focused primarily on shipping services.Martin Ackermann, BW LPG CEO said:  “The new product services division reflects BW LPG’s ambitions to provide existing and new customers with reliable…

Norwegian oil and gas major Equinor, formerly Statoil, is acquiring the Danish energy trading company, Danske Commodities for EUR 400 million (USD 470 mln). "Equinor has reached agreement to buy 100% of the shares in Danish energy trading company Danske Commodities (DC) for EUR 400 million, with smaller contingent payments depending on DC’s performance over the next couple of years," said a press release from the company. This acquisition – of one of Europe’s largest short-term electricity traders – supports Equinor’s development towards becoming a broad energy company. DC is also active in short-term gas trading and provides energy market services. DC was founded in 2004 and is based in Aarhus, Denmark, with 284 employees.

Qatar Gas Transport Company and Norwegian shipping business Hoegh LNG have embarked on a joint project to open new markets for Qatar to sell its liquefied natural gas (LNG) via floating import terminals. Hoegh LNG, a developer of floating LNG import terminals, expects to start work on the import terminal project in a matter of months, CEO Sveinung Stohle told Reuters. Stohle said Hoegh LNG and Qatar Gas Transport Company, which operates a large fleet of LNG tankers, are evaluating countries in which they could establish a floating terminal, naming South America and south-east Asia as attractive prospects. Top LNG producer Qatar, which is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis that erupted when Saudi Arabia and other Arab states cut diplomatic and transport links with Doha in early June…

Satisfied with the recent opening of a new floating LNG import terminal in Turkey plus contract successes in Africa and Asia, Hoegh LNG CEO and president, Sveinung Stoehle, cautiously lets us into his stylish Oslo offices for a bit of “disclosure”. The Hoegh business model is winning out, and now six floating storage and regasification units, or FSRUs, are in operation with four newbuilds on the way. The terminal in Turkey was built in just six months: “It would be years, not months, for a land-based gas terminal,” Stohle asserts.

The first Singapore Technical Reference (TR) 56 for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Bunkering was launched by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), SPRING Singapore and the Standards Development Organisation @ Singapore Chemical Industry Council (SDO@SCIC). This standard has been developed to provide a safe, efficient, sustainable and transparent technical framework for conducting LNG bunkering operations in Singapore, thereby offering greater assurance to local and international LNG bunker buyers and suppliers. Over the past three decades, Singapore has established itself as the world’s top bunkering port. This has been supported…

BP's oil trading business, one of the biggest in the sector, reported a rare loss in the fourth quarter after it lost a $70 million lawsuit over an oil cargo delivered to a Moroccan refinery. BP's Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary said due to flat trading positions ahead of a crucial OPEC meeting at the end of November, and the lawsuit, the company's oil trading division made a "small loss" in the fourth quarter. "There was a natural inclination to flatten up all of the books and there was also an adverse court ruling against us which is a $70 million hit," he told analysts on Tuesday.

Norway's Statoil will supply small-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) to terminals in the Baltic Sea through Lithuania's Klaipeda LNG terminal, a company official said on Thursday. The move comes after the energy firm signed an agreement on Thursday with Litgas and Lietuvos Duju Tiekimas, gas trading subsidiaries of Lithuanian state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija, to balance the gas supplies at the Klaipeda terminal. "If I'm sitting here in five years and this is a success story, I hope that we are churning three to five conventional cargos annually into this market", Statoil's head of LNG operations Ingvar Skogseide told reporters. Reporting by Andrius Sytas

Singapore looks to pull ahead in the race to become Asia’s main gas hub by establishing a domestic gas trading market. Rising liquefied natural gas (LNG)  supply and demand within Asia has prompted Singapore to to become a centre for energy trading. Singapore, already a global oil trading hub, is aiming to take advantage  from increasing numbers of buyers especially in China, but also India and other parts of Asia. Announcing the decicion, Singapore’s trade and industry minister S Iswaran said creating a domestic gas market would “allow domestic gas price discovery that reflects Singapore’s demand and supply conditions”. Forecasts suggest that Asia will buy two-thirds of the world’s LNG this year.

Cheniere Energy agrees to send 24 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG), or 89T BTUs, from its Sabine Pass Terminal in Louisiana in 2017 and 2018 to French state-controlled power utility  Electricite de France (EDF), its second deal in two months to ship the fuel to France after EDF agreed to buy as many as 26 cargoes last month. Cheniere Marketing International LLP, wholly owned subsidiary of Cheniere Energy,  has entered into another sales arrangement with EDF for the delivery of LNG cargoes on an ex-ship basis or "DES" from the Sabine Pass LNG terminal. Under the deal, the sales price of the shipments will be linked to the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) in the Netherlands, continental Europe's biggest and most liquid gas trading point.

Nexen Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of China's CNOOC Ltd, is closing its crude oil trading division following a round of job cuts announced last week, four market sources said on Monday. The Calgary-based company, which was acquired by state-controlled CNOOC in 2013 for $15.1 billion, cut 400 jobs last week in North America and the United Kingdom in response to plunging global oil prices. Three sources said Nexen was closing down its trading operations worldwide, although the majority of activity takes place in Calgary. The company will continue to market its own crude. Nexen did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In Canada, Nexen's crude oil desk is the biggest trading casualty so far of the global oil price rout, in which U.S.

The two gas trading hubs in the south of France will merge on April 1, power trading group Powernext said on Tuesday, marking a first step towards a unified French gas platform aimed at preventing the large price swings currently seen in the market. France is divided into three gas hubs, but pipeline bottlenecks between the northern hub called Peg Nord and the southeastern Peg Sud prevent Norwegian and Russian pipeline imports from flowing to the south of the country. This makes Peg Sud, and the third gas hub, TIGF, in the southwest, more dependent on relatively more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, weighing on local industry's competitiveness.

Britain has been topped by the Netherlands as Europe's leading natural gas trading hub this summer, ending decades of British dominance in the sector. Britain has reigned as Europe's busiest gas trading centre since discoveries of North Sea oil and gas in the 1970s made it Europe's main producer. It cemented this position in the 1990s when it liberalised its energy markets, meaning much of Britain's gas was sold and exported in pounds. However, continental Europe's markets have also liberalised in recent years…

Lithuania seeks to cut dependence on Russia; Statoil to supply 0.54 bcm of gas per year. This will cover about 20 pct of Lithuania's demand. Lithuania signed its first liquefied natural gas purchase deal with Norway's Statoil on Thursday, helping the country to reduce its total dependence on Russian supplies. The Baltic state plans to import 0.54 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas from Norway from 2015, enough to meet about one-fifth of its total consumption. The gas will supply a floating LNG terminal, named the "Independence". The total value of the contract is estimated at a little over $1 billion and the LNG price is linked to Britain's National Balancing Point (NBP) gas hub, Lithuanian importer Litgas said.

Lithuania will seek to buy up to 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas on a spot basis to test its LNG import terminal, which is expected to come online in December, the company in charge of the project said on Thursday. Klaipedos Nafta has signed a 10-year agreement with Norway's Hoegh LNG to lease a floating gas storage and regasification vessel, which will serve as an import terminal at the Baltic Sea port city of Klaipeda. Majority state-owned Klaipedos Nafta said in the agenda for its July 3 shareholder meeting that it expects to pay up to 112 million litas ($44 million) for the test LNG shipment. Litgas, the gas trading arm of Lithuanian energy group Lietuvos Energija…

Trelleborg Marine Systems has been awarded the contract to supply docking and mooring equipment and LNG cargo transfer technology for the new Yuedong LNG Terminal in China. After working closely with project owner, CNOOC Yuedong LNG, Trelleborg was chosen to supply the project’s LNG terminal with a fully integrated large-scale LNG mooring and transfer system thanks to its ability to provide an industry leading range of products, systems integration and end-to-end support. The range of equipment supplied by Trelleborg includes Double and Triple Quick Release Hooks with hazardous area compliance, SmartHook  Mooring Load Monitoring Systems with electric remote release…

Energy consulting, testing and certification company DNV KEMA will open a new Multiphase Flow Laboratory (MPFL) in Groningen, the Netherlands. The facility will allow equipment manufactures and oil and gas companies to test, validate and calibrate multiphase technologies – e.g. separators and flow meters – for the production of oil and gas and the measurement and trading of gas. As the MPFL is operating in a unique true-to-life environment, the facility will help increasing the accuracy of future multiphase flow meters, as well as the efficiency of future multiphase separators.

Top Business Leader Starts Seventh Term as City of Houston Appointee. The Houston City Council today unanimously reappointed businessman Kase Lawal to the Port Commission of the Port of Houston Authority for a seventh term. He was initially appointed in June 1999. Commissioners serve two-year terms without pay. Lawal, who is the chairman of Port Authority's Small Business Development Task Force, indicated this will be his last term on the commission. "Representing the city of Houston as a Port of Houston Authority commissioner is a true honor and significant responsibility…

The gas market is exciting, but only for those with a steady nerve and long-term commitment. Over 20 new LNG import projects have been mooted for the U.S. alone. We are witnessing an unprecedented expansion of shipping capacity to meet this and worldwide expansion of demand. Nearly 30 percent of the world fleet of LNG ships by gross tonnage (excluding options) have been ordered within the past two years. A number of these are already earmarked for U.S. import projects. If these projects succeed many more ships will be needed. The price of gas has still not recovered above the magical $3.50 to make projects profitable - what will happen to these projects? Will we see a glut of LNG ships as these orders hit the seas in the next three years as we now see in the box ship sector?