Growing gas demand from Asia, particularly from China, could swing the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market into a deficit by 2022-2025, Fitch Ratings says.
Market expectations of oversupply and weak gas prices have curtailed new investment activity in the sector in the past two years. Limited capacity additions beyond 2020 should be positive for spot prices, especially in Asia and Europe. This will benefit LNG projects with significant uncontracted volumes and those linked to gas spot prices.
An unprecedented wave of new projects becoming operational in 2016-2019 has not resulted in, and is unlikely to result in a material surplus in the LNG market in the medium term. Additional LNG volumes continue to find a home across a diverse array of countries and new buyers, and under more flexible contracts.
Funding for new LNG capacity is often structured as non-recourse project finance and is dependent on sponsors’ ability to secure long-term offtake agreements, which buyers have been less willing to sign in anticipation of larger volumes of uncontracted LNG coming to the market. Therefore, sponsors may need to commit a higher equity contribution to get funding for LNG projects, which will continue to delay final investment decisions (FIDs) for some time. A typical timeframe for a new LNG project to become operational following the FID is four to five years. Due to limited new FIDs very few new projects will come on stream in the early 2020s. FIDs in the next one to two years are likely to be limited to projects with lower capital and operating costs given constraints on the funding side.
We expect gas demand to continue its robust growth in the coming years, mostly driven by Asian markets that account for two-thirds of overall LNG demand. This is due a combination of healthy power demand growth in the region, natural gas being the fossil fuel of choice in pursuit of curbing air pollution, and the backlash against nuclear energy. Japan is currently the largest LNG importer, but China is catching up quickly and becoming the major market for LNG.
The LNG market could shift into deficit by 2022-2025. Gas pricing is therefore likely to improve in the major importer markets, benefiting LNG projects relying on spot and hub pricing and entities with significant LNG trading portfolios. We also expect oil companies to gradually return to their earlier LNG ambitions. This includes oil majors, like Shell, BP and Total, most of which emphasise the growing role of gas in the global energy mix.
The LNG market is still in its formative stage. Pricing mechanisms, contract terms and financing structures continue to evolve. Long-term oil-linked contracts are giving way to increased trading activity, which represented around a quarter of all new contracts in 2017, according to IGU World Gas LNG Report, compared to just 1% in 2012. New large LNG projects still rely on long-term contracts in order to secure financing. However, elsewhere contracts are becoming shorter, and the quality of counterparties is declining. Contract prices are increasingly de-linked from oil pricing with a growing focus on spot and hub-based gas pricing.
Fitch-rated rated LNG projects will not be significantly affected by the trend towards increasing commoditisation. In the US, rated projects, such as Cameron LNG and Sabine Pass, benefit from robust contractual frameworks that provide mitigation to completion risks and often employ tolling or tolling-like arrangements that protect cash flows from volume and price risks. RasGas in Qatar mostly relies on long-term oil-linked contracts.
Source: Fitch Ratings