Asian buyers struggle to find March LNG as supply remains tight
Countries including Thailand and Bangladesh are dipping into the spot market to safeguard near-term energy security
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[BANGKOK] Some Asian liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers are struggling to find prompt cargoes, after a war-related outage at the world’s largest export facility in Qatar tightened global supplies of the fuel.
Countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, India and Vietnam are dipping into the spot market to safeguard near-term energy security, as uncertainty persists over the duration of the US-Israel war against Iran.
But some tenders for March – such as from India’s Gail and Gujarat State Petroleum – have gone unawarded, indicating a shortage of immediately available fuel.
Thailand’s state-owned oil and petrol company PTT was seeking a cargo for late March to early April, but bought one only for next month.
While some importers were able to secure LNG for March, a few of these cargoes were awarded at high prices.
Bangladesh locked in two emergency shipments, one priced at about US$28 for each million British thermal units – about 2.5 times higher than the January rate – and the other at close to US$23 for each million British thermal units, said an official for Petrobangla, a state-owned oil, petrol and mineral exploration and distribution company.
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They added that the move was to avert a domestic energy crisis.
The tight supply also comes at a time when South-east Asia is expecting hotter weather in the months ahead, potentially raising the demand for power.
Buyers in Asia will need to continue competing with each other and Europe for a limited amount of petrol.
Global LNG prices have surged, as the Middle East conflict continues to rattle energy markets. European petrol jumped as much as 30 per cent on Monday, following a spike in crude oil, before settling at prices about 6 per cent higher.
Asian LNG prices have more than doubled since the war broke out on Feb 28, with traders expecting prices to remain high for as long as it lasts. BLOOMBERG
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