Nothing seems to stop the bad news for natural gas anymore. He’s just had a terrible week. An explosion in a terminal in the USA, John Kerry criticizes gas practices and the American Congress, which denounces the leaks of methane hidden by shale operators in the USA.
While American gas has just been welcomed as the messiah in Europe, it is becoming a pebble in the shoe. On this good news, gas rose 10% in Europe to €88 while it lost 10% in the USA.
At the beginning of the year, the gas lobby had succeeded in introducing natural gas into the European taxonomy of clean energies.
Since then, the war in Ukraine has shuffled the cards and this week 3 major events have just occurred in the USA with a report from the American Congress on methane leaks, an explosion in an American gas terminal which puts out of service 17% of the LNG export capacity. Finally, John Kerry, the United States’ chief climate diplomat, dotted the i.
Explosion in the USA: 17% export of LNG stopped
An explosion occurred at a Freeport LNG export gas terminal south of Houston. It took almost a fifth of US LNG export capacity out of service.
This is bad news for Europe, which is counting on American shale gas to replace Russian gas.
No one was injured and the company said it had the issue under control. But she admitted she had been forced to shut down her liquefaction facility and would remain out of service for “a minimum of three weeks”.
In the USA, gas prices at the Henry center fell by more than 12%. In Europe, gas prices rose 10% to €88 MWh
John Kerry and the War in Ukraine
At the end of an intervention on methane during the Summit of the Americas, John Kerry, the United States’ chief climate diplomat, shed light on “American special interests trying to exploit the situation in Ukraine by installing more gas export infrastructure there. We cannot allow this to happen”.
Not sure that Kerry is in phase with Biden who welcomed gas supply agreements to Europe.
Climate: methane gas emissions underestimated
A report from the US Congress accuses the shale industry of not worrying about methane leaks contrary to the advertisements of ExxonMobil or Chevron.
In a 61 page reportHouse of Representatives Committee staff learned that oil and gas companies have internal data showing that the sector’s methane emission rates are likely much higher than official data reported to the Office of the US environment (EPA).
In the report, we can read “that a very significant proportion of methane emissions appear to be caused by a small number of super-emitting leaks. A company has identified a single leak that could be equivalent to more than 80% of all methane emissions it reported to the EPA for all of its Permian oil and gas production operations in 2020. ”