Global Demand Squeezing Natural Gas Supply. LNG terminals sit empty.

[phantom power]

I've been a little bemused by the confidence of people and governments pinning their strategery on methane. "We're using natural gas -- expensive fuel hasn't got nothin on us!"

The advantage is going to be very temporary.

Only a month after Cheniere Energy inaugurated its $1.4 billion liquefied natural gas terminal here, an empty supertanker sat in its berth with no place to go while workers painted empty storage tanks.

The nearly idle terminal is a monument to a stalled experiment, one that was supposed to import so much L.N.G. from around the world that homes would be heated and factories humming at bargain prices.

But now L.N.G. shipments to the United States are slowing to a trickle, and Cheniere and other companies have dropped plans to build more terminals.

A longstanding assumption of American energy policy has been that natural gas would be plentiful abroad, and therefore readily available for importation, as production falls off in North America, where many fields are tapped out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/business/29gas.html?_r=1&ref=worldbusiness&oref=slogin

[hunter]

1. LNG is largely a cargo cult fairy tale.

It makes less and less sense to export LNG when natural gas can be converted to more profitable products nearer the sites where it is extracted.

Why sell bulk LNG when you can sell synthetic fuels, fertilizer, cement, or desalinated water at a much higher profit?

Shell Gas to Liquids project in Qatar:

http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/our_strategy/major_projects_2/pearl_gtl/pearl_gtl_13032008.html