据今日油价3月23日报道，壳牌在其《2021年液化天然气展望》中表示，到2040年，全球液化天然气的年需求将从去年的3.6亿吨增至7亿吨。其中75%的需求增长将来自一个市场——亚洲。
多年来，亚洲经济体一直是液化天然气的主要市场。作为一种更清洁、成本更低的煤炭替代品，液化天然气越来越受到重视。壳牌表示，只有在净零承诺的情况下，这种突出地位才会继续提高。这种增长可能会把亚洲变成一个液化天然气买家的卡特尔组织。
彭博社的Anna Shiryaevskaya最近在一篇关于液化天然气的文章中写道，亚洲对液化天然气的需求正在颠覆这种商品的传统定价模式。最新证据表明，基本面总是胜过一切，亚洲决定了今冬的液化天然气价格，在最冷的季节将其推高至天价，然后在天气开始变暖时将其推低至更正常的水平。尽管传统的定价模式是以欧洲为中心的，基本上是将液化天然气价格与原油基准价格挂钩。
欧洲仍是液化天然气的消费大市场，在可预见的未来，欧洲国家仍将是液化天然气的消费大国。但鉴于壳牌未来约75%的液化天然气需求将来自亚洲的预期，在这个正在蓬勃发展的市场上，欧洲开始看起来像是一个小买家。
瑞士贸易公司Axpo Solutions的一名分析师表示:“未来几年，欧洲的天然气价格将越来越不以欧洲为中心，而越来越受全球的影响力。”
这种影响将主要来自亚洲，最近冬季价格的飙升就证明了这一点。而且很可能与长期供应合同一起出现，这将对液化天然气的价格产生更长远的影响。在今年年初价格飙升超过1000%之前，现货市场一直是亚洲购买液化天然气的首选市场。现在，在买家看来，长期供应合同更合理。
卖家也有同感。上个月世界上最大的液化天然气生产国和出口国,卡塔尔的能源部长建议大型交易选择安全的长期合同,以避免再次出现1月份的价格飙升情况。他指出，如果现货市场继续主导液化天然气贸易空间，价格飙升将是不可避免的，尤其是当前供应即将再次收紧。
因此，一方面，需求在增长，而且大部分增长来自于一个地区，由三大消费国主导，分别是中国、印度和韩国。前两个国家对液化天然气行业来说尤其重要。壳牌数据显示，2020年，中国和印度合计占全球液化天然气进口增长的大部分，而亚洲的另外两个液化天然气进口大国——日本和韩国，则出现了下降。
另一方面，长期供应合同比波动剧烈的现货市场更具吸引力，因此大买家可以在价格持续较低时锁定价格。这意味着，如果卡塔尔最高能源长官萨阿德?阿尔卡比(Saad al-Kaabi)的观点是正确的，而且供应确实将吃紧，现货市场可能会变得更加动荡。这些趋势描绘了一幅可以称为“新兴买家卡特尔”的画面。
这肯定是一个非自愿的卡特尔，至少目前看来是这样的。但是即使是一个非自愿的卡特尔也会影响全球液化天然气的流动和价格，减少对其他液化天然气市场的供应并推高价格。
如果中国的大型能源贸易商通过长期合同从卡塔尔、澳大利亚或美国获得该国所需的大部分液化天然气，那么留给中国以外的液化天然气就会减少。这通常意味着在现货市场和对后来者的长期供应合同市场上价格会更高。这就是亚洲在未来几十年可能决定全球液化天然气价格的原因。
能源咨询公司Cornwall Insight表示:“英国和欧洲天然气市场对全球液化天然气价格的敏感性可能会增加。由于没有在英国新建长期储存设施的具体计划，加上英国大陆架开采量不断下降，未来几年该地区可能会加大对液化天然气的依赖。”
事实上，随着欧洲不再是价格制定者，它将变得更加依赖液化天然气进口，并更容易受到市场价格波动的影响。猜测亚洲强国能否将其在液化天然气市场的主导地位作为一种武器，将是一件有趣的事情。它们当然能够影响全球液化天然气的流动，影响供应(如果不是全球需求的话)，并因此影响价格。从印度最近的情况来看，由于对价格的担忧，印度开始减少对中东石油的购买。因此，世界上最大的液化天然气买家肯定会帮助或阻碍世界某个地区的供应增长，就像欧佩克对待石油一样。
王佳晶 摘译自 今日油价
原文如下：
Asian LNG Buyers Could Form The World’s Next Energy Cartel
Global demand for liquefied natural gas will grow to 700 million tons annually by 2040 from 360 million tons last year, Shell said in its LNG Outlook 2021. As much as 75 percent of this demand growth will come from one regional market: Asia.
Asian economies have been a key market for liquefied natural gas for years now. The fuel has been gaining growing prominence as a cleaner and cost-effective alternative to coal. This prominence will only continue growing with net-zero commitments, Shell said. And this growth could turn Asia into an LNG buyers’ cartel.
Bloomberg’s Anna Shiryaevskaya wrote in a recent article on LNG that Asian demand for LNG was upending traditional pricing models for the commodity. In the latest proof that fundamentals always beat everything else, Asia dictated LNG prices this winter, sending them sky-high during the coldest of the season and then pushing them back down to more normal levels once the weather started warming—all this despite the traditional price-setting model that is Europe-centric and that basically consists in tying LNG prices to the benchmark price of crude oil.
Europe is still a big consumer of liquefied natural gas, and it will continue to be a big consumer in the observable future. But in light of Shell’s forecast about 75 percent of future LNG demand coming from Asia, Europe starts to look like a minor buyer on what is certainly a booming market.
“Over the next couple of years European gas prices will become less and less Europe-centric, and more and more globally influenced,” an analyst with Swiss trading firm Axpo Solutions told Bloomberg’s Shiryaevskaya.
Most of this influence will come from Asia, as evidenced recently during the winter price spike. And it may well come with long-term supply contracts, which will have their own—longer—influence over LNG prices. The spot market was the go-to place to buy LNG in Asia until prices soared by more than 1,000 percent earlier this year. Now, long-term supply contracts look more reasonable to buyers.
Sellers share the sentiment. Last month, the energy minister of Qatar, the world’s top LNG producer and exporter, advised big sellers to secure long-term contracts to avoid a repeat of the January price spike, which, he said, would be inevitable if the spot market continued to dominate the LNG trade space, not least because supply was about to tighten once again.
So, on the one hand, demand is growing, and most of this growth is coming from one single region, dominated by three big consumers: China, India, and South Korea. The first two are particularly important: last year, China and India together accounted for the bulk of global growth in LNG imports, according to Shell, while the other two big LNG importers in Asia—Japan and South Korea—saw declines.
On the other hand, long-term supply contracts are starting to look more attractive than the volatile spot market once again, so big buyers could lock low prices while they last. This means that the spot market could become even more volatile if Qatar’s top energy man, Saad al-Kaabi is right and supply is indeed set to tighten. These trends are painting a picture of what could be called an emerging buyers’ cartel.
It is an involuntary cartel, for sure, at least for the time being. In LNG, Asian states are looking out for themselves, not for their neighbor, not least because of neighborly tensions such as the ones between China and India. But even an involuntary cartel could—and would—affect global LNG flows and prices, reducing supply to other LNG markets and pushing prices higher.
If big energy traders in China secure most of the LNG the country needs from Qatar, Australia, or the United States under long-term contracts, this will leave less LNG to go around outside China. This usually means higher prices, both on the spot market and the long-term supply contract market for latecomers. This is how Asia, although politically divided, could dictate global LNG prices in the coming decades.
“The susceptibility of UK and European gas markets to global LNG prices may be set to increase,” Cornwall Insight, an energy consultancy, told Bloomberg’s Shiryaevskaya. “With no concrete plans for new long-term storage facilities in the UK and declining UK Continental Shelf, it could point to a greater LNG dependency in the coming years.”
Indeed, Europe is set to become more dependent on LNG imports and more vulnerable to price movements on this market as it stops being the price-setter. It would be interesting to speculate whether the Asian powerhouses would be able to wield their dominance on the LNG market as a weapon. They are certainly in a position to influence global LNG flows, affecting supply, if not global demand, and, as a consequence, prices. And from what we recently saw in India, which started reducing its purchases of Middle Eastern oil because of price concerns, the world’s biggest buyers of LNG could certainly help or hinder supply growth in one or another part of the world, just like OPEC does with oil.
免责声明：本网转载自其它媒体的文章，目的在于弘扬石化精神，传递更多石化信息，并不代表本网赞同其观点和对其真实性负责，在此我们谨向原作者和原媒体致以敬意。如果您认为本站文章侵犯了您的版权，请与我们联系，我们将第一时间删除。
