Читать книгу The Energy World is Flat - Lacalle Daniel - Страница 7

The close down of all nuclear capacity in Japan left a large gap in power generation that had to be filled by coal, natural gas, and crude oil.

The seaborne coal market was able to absorb the increase in Japanese demand with relative ease, but the much smaller market of seaborne liquefied natural gas (LNG) suffered a severe shock that sent prices skyrocketing.

Prices of natural gas in Asia more than doubled reaching over $20/MMBtu, equivalent to over US$110 per barrel of oil equivalent (USD/boe).2

Fukushima impacted other large Asian consumers, such as Korea, Taiwan, and China, who also rely on natural gas for their current and future power generation mix, reinforcing the perception that Asia would buy “unlimited amounts of gas, at unlimited prices”.

The imbalances could not be resolved easily, and the price of LNG for delivery to Japan stayed at an extremely high level for several years in order to direct any available LNG towards North East Asia.

In March 2014, three years after the Fukushima accident, and after extensive political debate in Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Abe announced his pledge to gradually restart nuclear reactors towards the end of the year, which will most likely ease the demand and domestic tightness of natural gas in the region.

However, the sustained high prices and optimistic demand expectations have been a major incentive to the development of new production and liquefaction capacity around the world. The list of producing countries and investments is long.

Look at Australia, for example, investing over half a trillion dollars in new LNG infrastructure to unlock large stranded reserves.

Or Mozambique, where local engineers in the mid-1990s were telling me how desperate they were to prove the large potential of the country, but where the perception among politicians was that it was not worth exploring. Ten years later, with the incentives of high prices and cooperation with international investors and companies, the country made some of the most important gas discoveries and infrastructure development in the region.

Or, even Cyprus and Israel, where large discoveries are putting them on the energy map …as producers!