Country Report

Russian gas in Europe: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.

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An in-depth analysis of recent developments and prospects in Europe-Russia gas relations

 With quality information from Russia getting increasingly scarce, the Russian natural gas market has become more and more of a black box. In its latest report “Russian gas in Europe: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. An in-depth analysis of recent developments and prospects in Europe-Russia gas relations”, CEDIGAZ tracks the unprecedented changes between glorious “yesterday” (2018-2021), gloomy “today” (2022-Q1 2023) of Russian gas (both pipeline and LNG) in Europe, including the evolution of the European countries’ dependence on Russian gas, using data still available. The report also discusses possible futures for Russian gas in Europe after 2023 (“tomorrow”) – given new inputs, including selected pipeline export routes limitations, the Turkish natural gas hub initiative, and Russian LNG project developments.

Oil and Gas Majors in India: Co-creating the Gas and LNG Market – REPORT

Posted in CEDIGAZ Insights, Country Report on

India aims to raise the share of natural gas in the energy mix from 6.5% currently to 15% in 2030. This would lead to a huge growth in LNG imports. But India is one of the most sensitive price markets and needs infrastructure development for natural gas to fulfil its development potential. To address these challenges energy majors are moving downstream to get closer to the final users. COVID-19 has introduced an additional uncertainty to natural gas demand growth but the Indian gas market fundamentals remain robust.

The Indian natural gas market presents a substantial growth perspective. The Indian Government is actively promoting natural gas to diversify its energy mix towards cleaner fuels, reduce oil dependency and tackle air pollution in big cities. The aim is to move towards a gas-based economy and raise the share of natural gas in the energy mix to 15% by 2030 from around 6.5% now. Over the past two years, there has been growing attention on rapidly building out gas infrastructure, including inter- and intra-state pipelines, LNG import terminals, city gas distribution networks to cover over 70% of the population, and CNG/LNG stations across the country. Domestic and foreign investments in the natural sector are likely to amount to $60 billion over the next five years.

Outlook for Indian LNG imports

Source: CEDIGAZ, IEA WEO2019

Iran Natural Gas Report

Posted in CEDIGAZ Insights, Country Report, Natural Gas Market on

Executive Summary of the CEDIGAZ report on the Iranian Gas Chain under US sanctions by Dr Sara Vakhshouri founder and president of SVB Energy International and specialist of the Iranian energy sector

Iran has one of the largest proven natural gas reserves in the world, hosts about 17% of the world’s proven natural gas reserves. Iran is also the world’s third–largest dry natural gas producer after the United States and Russia. About 80% of Iran’s gas reserves are from non-associated gas fields.

Based on Iran’s 6th Five Year Economic Plan (2016-2021), Iran’s rich gas production should reach 474.5 bcm a year or 1300 mcm a day by March 2021. This is almost twice its production of 250.7 bcm in 2016. Despite the upward natural gas output trend, due to sanctions, Iran will not hit its planned production target.

In March 2019, Iran’s processed about 889 mcm/d of rich gas that was produced from independent gas and form oil fields. Rich gas in Iran is processed by NGL factories, gas refineries and dehydration units. The largest share of refined gas production capacity belongs to gas refineries in South Pars.

Despite the fact that Iran is the world’s third largest producer of natural gas, its exports only constitute less than 1% of global gas trade. This is primarily due to its large domestic demand and then because of sanctions on its exports, and lack of investment and access to required technologies.

Iran’s condensate and gas liquid output has soared over the past decade. Most gas liquids are produced in the previously described NGL plants. Nevertheless, the actual production of these units has been less than 50% of their nominal capacity. This was significantly low during the nuclear sanctions and newest round of US sanctions. As a result, Iran has had to offset its oil production and adjust its ability to export. Lower crude oil production had additionally limited overall NGL production volumes, which is the byproduct of crude oil production in Iran.

Tighter US sanctions on Iran energy industry have had a significant and undeniable impact upon Iran’s gas development projects. If US sanctions against Iran continue in the long term, and Iran does not succeed in accessing international capital and technology, it will not increase its natural gas production. In, fact its production levels may start to decrease due to natural decline in South Pars production.

Unlike President Obama’s nuclear sanctions, the current sanctions include condensate export alongside the crude oil export in order to put “maximum pressure” on Iran. As a result of limitations on its condensate export, Iran is struggling to maintain its gas production particularly from South Pars.

Dr Sara Vakhshouri for CEDIGAZ

Complete report available to CEDIGAZ members https://private.cedigaz.org

Get the report (non-members)