OREANDA-NEWS. The annual report of the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL) says that in 2018 net imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe amounted to 4.4 million tons, while the United States delivered 2.7 million tons of LNG to the European Union.

With the launch of the Yamal LNG project by Russian gas industry company Novatek in 2018 Russia approached the United States in liquefied gas export volumes. The export of American LNG in 2018 amounted to 20.7 million tons, and the export of it from Russia reached 18.4 million tons (it is an aggregate volume of the projects “Sakhalin-2” and “Yamal SPG”).

Australia, the USA and Russia (the latter due to “Yamal SPG”) provided the main increase in the supply of liquefied gas. The main consumers are China and South Korea.

A net LNG imports of European countries was up 6.4 % year-over-year — to 48.9 million tons, mainly due to the increase of supplies to Belgium (a 1 million tons growth) and the Netherlands (a 1.3 million tons growth).

At the same time, Spain in 2018 reduced the imports of LNG by 1.4 million tons due to the increase in the imports of pipeline gas. Totally, Spain imported 10.8 million tons of LNG in the reporting year, it is followed by Turkey (8.3 million tons), France (7.8 million tons) and Italy (6 million tons).

In general, last year global LNG imports grew by 8.3 % to 314 million tons. Only 42 countries buy liquefied gas, and 20 nations export it. New importers of liquefied gas are Bangladesh and Panama. The major portion of LNG (76 %) goes to Asia.