Qatar accounts for bulk of LNG supplies to Asia in 2022: IGU

LNG trade between the Middle East and Asia was the third largest globally in 2022, with Qatar accounting for bulk of the supplies, the International Gas Union (IGU) said in its ‘2023 World LNG Report’ released on Wednesday.
Middle East to Asia LNG trade accounted for 40.6mn tonnes in 2022, up 6.7mn tonnes on the year before, IGU said.
Qatar accounted for bulk of the LNG exports at 36.1mn tonnes, which was 9.1mn tonnes higher than in 2021, IGU noted.
In 2022, global LNG trade flows continued to be dominated by intra-Asia Pacific trade (97.9mn tonnes), mainly driven by a rise in exports from Australia to Japan (31.2mn tonnes), South Korea (11.6mn tonnes), Chinese Taipei (7.6mn tonnes) and from Malaysia to Japan (11.8mn tonnes).
Most of the remaining supply from Asia Pacific went to Asia (37.8mn tonnes) as seen in previous years.
Exports from Australia to China alone totalled 22.8mn tonnes in 2022.
Notably, Asia Pacific shipped 0.2mn tonnes to Europe, including one cargo from Australia to the Netherlands, one cargo from Indonesia to France and one from Indonesia to Turkiye.
“Despite being a long distance with high shipping costs, the cargoes helped meet Europe’s immediate needs for LNG to offset lower Russian piped gas volumes,” IGU said.
The second-largest LNG interregional trade flow was from North America to Europe at 55.2mn tonnes, a 148% increase compared to 2021, again largely compensating for Europe’s loss of Russian piped gas volumes.
North America sent 14.2mn tonnes to Asia Pacific (6.2mn tonnes to South Korea and 4.4mn tonnes to Japan) and only 1.9mn tonnes to China.
IGU report indicated trade from the Middle East to Asia Pacific fell to 30.7mn tonnes last year from 36.3mn tonnes in 2021.
Africa prioritised Europe’s need for LNG in 2022, exporting 28.6mn tonnes to Europe, compared to 23.8mn tonnes in 2021.
By contrast, African exports to Asia fell to 4.3mn tonnes last year from 11.4mn tonnes in 2021, mainly driven by a reduction in exports there from Egypt (-3.1mn tonnes), Nigeria (-1.5mn tonnes) and Angola (-1.4mn tonnes).
Even though Russia pipeline exports to Europe fell significantly in 2022, Russian LNG exports to Europe increased by 2mn tonnes to 14.8mn tonnes.
The second largest offtaker of Russian LNG was the Asia Pacific region, which imported 11.5mn tonnes from Russia in 2022. Most of Russia’s remaining LNG went to Asia, with China the main customer.
Europe was the largest offtaker of LNG from Latin America, receiving 5mn tonnes of LNG from the region, a 95% or 2.4mn tonnes increase compared to 2021.
In Europe, Norway was the sole LNG producer after bringing Snøhvit LNG back online in mid-2022 following an outage.
Norway exported all of its 2.7mn tonnes of LNG output to Europe last year, IGU noted.