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Qatar is hosting an ordinary summit of the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries, including Russia, on Tuesday, amid fears in Europe for its Russian gas supplies, linked to the crisis around Ukraine. In the event of the Russian tap being cut off, the White House says it is working on alternatives.
From our correspondent in Washington,
It was several weeks ago, when unveiling an arsenal of possible sanctions against Russia in the event of an invasion of Ukraine, a senior American official announced, without being able to provide more details, that work had been launched with companies and countries concerned to compensate for a possible reduction in Russian gas exports to Europe.
A few hours later, the White House announced that the Emir of Qatar, one of the largest producers, holder of the largest reserves in the world, would be received at the White House. Except that when he arrived in the Oval Office, Sheikh al-Thani said absolutely nothing about exports to Europe. And for good reason, Qatar is already practically at its maximum production capacity and it must honor old contracts with Asian customers.
Qatar therefore does not have much leeway to supply the Europeans, who are short of gas for the second part of the winter. And yet, it happens that in this sector, LNG carriers change destination in the middle of the ocean to divert to buyers with higher bids. This is what happened a few days later when Japan, a country that is not yet a gas producer, announced that it was reselling some of its planned imports to Europe. Precision, it is a resale at the market price of a liquefied natural gas purchased before the price surge, in other words with a profit at stake.
This soaring price, a country also intends to take advantage of it. This is the United States, the largest gas producer in the world. With the threats to the Russian faucet, there is much less talk in Europe of the damage caused to the environment by the American mode of production, hydraulic fracturing. The share of American liquefied natural gas in European imports has been rising steadily for several months and the trend should not be reversed if the gas weapon is used in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.