India Wants to Form LNG Buying Cartel with Japan & South Korea
In 2013, Dominion announced a 20-year deal to export 100% of the output from their planned Cove Point, MD LNG plant. All of the Marcellus gas from Cove Point will get exported to both India and Japan (see Dominion’s Cove Point LNG Facility Achieves Important Milestones). At the time, natural gas in Japan was trading for $16.20 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). Today it's trading at around $7/Mcf. A lot has changed in the past three years. The world is now awash in LNG (liquefied natural gas), thanks to an abundance of shale gas. India imports almost all of its energy--and a lot of that energy is LNG. Instead of competing with other nearby Asian nations, like Japan, South Korea and even China, India wants to form a coalition, we'd call it a cartel, to band together to buy LNG. If such a block were to form, it would be a formidable force on the price of LNG in world markets. Such a cartel would influence the Marcellus/Utica region and the price we get for exported gas...
To view this content, log into your member account. (Not a member? Join Today!)