Rockwell Advisors: China’s LNG demand expected to jump five-fold before2020 says GDF.

Oct. 26, 2011 - PRLog -- The emergence of ten new importing countries in Asia may add another 27 million tonnes of new demand each year, an executive from GDF Suez SA informed Rockwell Advisors recently.

Flourishing Asian demand, together with uncertainty over the pace of new supplies, may create lasting opportunities for supplies as far afield as the U.S to flow into the Pacific, Nicholas Zanen, vice-president of trading at U.S. energy Company Cheniere Energy Inc said at an industry conference.

Philip Olivier, president of GDF Suez's LNG unit, told Rockwell Advisors that LNG demand in Asia and the Middle East was likely to increase by 95 million tonnes per year from 2010-2020 and although there was enough flexible supply in the medium term to sate Asian demand, new plants urgently needed to be built to meet long-term growth.

"We cannot underestimate LNG demand in China and India, and there is little additional volume available from the Atlantic Basin," Olivier told us.

GDF's bullish forecast on China backed up forecasts by state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp, which predicted the country's 2015 imports would be around 30 mtpa, driven by a surge in LNG-fuelled vehicles and development of LNG storage facilities.

China imported 9.4 million tonnes of LNG last year.

Oliver also told Rockwell Advisors that his firm, in an attempt to ride on the Asian growth, was focusing on building a supply base in Australia via its proposed Bonaparte floating LNG project.

"Australia is our No.1 priority at the moment because of its stability and proximity to Asian markets," he said.
Even though Australia's gas exports seem set to triple by 2017 and will overtake Qatar as the world's top LNG exporter, Olivier said the supply growth would not be sufficient to take away the premium in Asian prices.

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