“The world is in the middle of the first truly global energy crisis,” the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said today in Singapore.
The official went on to warn that natural gas and LNG markets would tighten further in 2023, with only 20 million tons of new liquefaction capacity scheduled to come online in that year, Reuters reported. [bold, links added]
Speaking at the Singapore International Energy Week, the head of the IEA also said that while supply remains tight, demand for gas will continue to be strong, especially in Europe and possibly in China.
Birol’s warning comes amid expectations that this winter will NOT be the toughest for Europe.
Next winter is believed to be potentially much worse because, during the first half of this year, the EU could stock up on Russian pipeline gas, which is unlikely to come back next year, leaving the EU with a supply gap that other suppliers would be hard-pressed to fill.
Meanwhile, as many as 60 LNG tankers have turned into floating storage [units] off European coasts as there is not enough regasification capacity on the continent to unload the cargo.
This, CNBC reports, is delaying some of the tankers’ return to the Gulf Coast to reload, and pushes gas inventories higher, Andrew Lipow from Lipow Oil Associates told the network.
“The wave of LNG tankers has overwhelmed the ability of the European regasification facilities to unload the cargoes in a timely manner,” Lipow said.
Read rest at OilPrice
Over the past several years we have heard from the climate propagandists that certain heat waves, hurricanes, or draughts were unprecedented. Checking history they have all happened before and usually the past events were worse. As the article clearly points out, what is truly unprecedented is the self inflicted energy crisis.
I believe that the IEA is left wing, from what I have read by them.
This is all self-inflicted by the short-range thinking of European “leaders” who chose to get their gas and oil from a megalomaniac dictator in Russia. They all have their own energy resources that they could exploit but instead decided to pretend to go “green” by not using their own resource and instead import it. Will they learn? Seems Sweden has but what about Germany? Or the UK?
The most stupid country must be Australia as they are in the process of shutting coal power stations and plan to build a massive new renewables only grid. There will be nothing to replace the coal plants, so I can see where Australia will be in less than 2 years. Their first coal plant will close April 2023. That’s when the blackouts will start.. !!
Colin; I respectfully disagree. You have underestimated Canada’s ability to undermine its own self-interest. Guess who signed the LNG supply agreement with Germany that Canada turned down? Australia.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/canada-is-the-most-useful-climate-idiot-in-the-world/
We need to remember that originally the liberal elite never planned to use Russian energy. As nuclear and fossil fuel power plants were shut down the plan was to fill the gap with wind and solar power. When that fell short, they were forced to use energy from Russia.
So are you telling me shutting down coal power plants and even some nuclear and trying to replace that energy with fickle solar and wind and then trying to get as many EVs on the road as possible — all that causes a global energy crisis? Who woulda thunk it? Must all be because of that Global Warming stuff, right?