U.S. pressures Tanzania on mega-project delays: During a visit to Dar es Salaam, and following recent reporting that contract negotiations for the proposed US$42 billion Tanzania export facility are going nowhere, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joy Basu has warned that companies such as Exxon Mobil, Equinor, and Shell that have been pushing the deal with the Tanzanian authorities are at a point where they are now “willing to walk away.” The senior diplomat said the status of the project had been a major discussion point during her discussions with Tanzanian government officials. Despite LNG project problems in Tanzania and Mozambique, where Exxon is still hoping to take a final investment decision on the US$23 billion Rovuma project amid a still ongoing, violent insurgency, U.S. companies are gearing up for the Invest in African Energy conference in Paris on May 14–15. The conference promoters believe that floating LNG projects in particular can be an area of future market growth across the continent. (MSN, Offshore Energy)

Baku seeks European public finance support once again for expansion project: Amid human rights concerns from some observers in Brussels, a high-level EU delegation to Baku led by Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson reaffirmed the bloc’s gas import relationship with Azerbaijan via the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC). “We are working with Azerbaijan on expanding the Southern Gas Corridor and doubling our gas trade by 2027,” commented Simson. Since 2021, the EU has imported gas from the Caspian state led by hardline president Ilham Aliyev, with volumes increasing to 12 billion cubic meters (bcm) last year. Talking during sessions in Baku about the SGC expansion ambitions, Aliyev said, “I think that financing from European financial institutions, at least of this project, must be done based on a realistic approach and should not be overshadowed by general anti-fossil fuel trends.” This nod to new public finance support for the expanded pipeline has been rebuffed by the European Investment Bank (EIB), one of the original SGC backers. “Natural gas transmission infrastructure is no longer eligible for EIB financing,” an EIB spokesperson told Politico Europe. “As the EU climate bank, the EIB will work with the [COP29] presidency to deliver a successful climate summit in November.” It remains to be seen if the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) or other financiers will step up once again for the Aliyev regime. (CEENERGY NEWS, Trend) 

European sanctions on Russian gas still proving elusive: EU efforts to completely decouple from Russian gas imports by 2027 continue to be riddled with confusion following a meeting of the bloc’s national energy ministers. While the EU’s energy commissioner Kadri Simson continued to insist that formal sanctions across the board would be the most effective solution for member states to wean themselves off a remaining 43 bcm of Russian piped gas and LNG, as imported in 2023, the fallback position for now remains individual country bans that will be able to take effect from next month at the discretion of national capitals. Belgium’s energy minister Tinne van der Straeten said that the EU remained “too divided” to introduce formal sanctions, comments that can be attributed to still considerable contracted volumes of Russian LNG arriving at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge for transshipment to other countries including Spain. (Montel News, Bloomberg)

More evidence of worsening security situation in Mozambique: The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières has said that 80,000 people have been displaced since January this year as a result of intensified jidahist attacks in Cabo Delgado province. There are also fears for 72 children who have gone missing in recent weeks as a result of the unrest. It remains unclear how or when the major gas export projects in the region will move forward in these conditions. A UN report also noted that more than 60% of those displaced by the new wave of attacks are children and 129 schools have been closed. (BBC)

Bangladesh aiming for ambitious drilling and importing spree: Dwindling domestic gas reserves are forcing state-owned Petrobangla to step up efforts to boost production by this month inviting international bids for oil and gas exploration in 24 blocks in the Bay of Bengal. According to Zanendra Nath Sarker, the company’s chairman, the aim appears to be to open up 100 new gas wells for drilling between 2025 and 2028 to stave off the potential drying up of Bangladesh’s gas reserves by 2033. At the same time, Petrobangla has plans for this year to substantially boost LNG imports from the spot market in order to complement long-term LNG deals and to “reduce supply shortages to keep gas-fired power plants and industries running.” While Bangladesh struggled last year to take delivery of only 23 cargoes via the spot market, this is to be ramped up to 48 cargoes this year, when approved by the government. (Reuters)

India proceeds with northeast pipeline buildout: In the latest gasification investment announcement from the government, pipeline networks in the Himalayan region of Kashmir are to be progressed at an estimated price tag of US$4.5 billion. City gas distribution networks are expected to cover the entire northeast region by the end of 2025, say officials, with supply to small industries, cars, and households to come from the region’s own production sources. Earlier this year, a bidding process was initiated for the construction and operation of the 325-kilometer Jammu-Srinagar pipeline, one of the key pieces of new transit infrastructure for the Kashmir Valley. (Pipeline & Gas Journal, Pipeline Technology Journal)

Afghanistan: Following a meeting with officials from Turkmenistan, the Taliban government has announced that it is ready to start construction on the long-delayed, 1,680-kilometer Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. 

Austria: Vienna has agreed to provide part of the €200 million (US$217 million) financing required to construct a 40-kilometer expansion of the West Austria Gas pipeline that will boost the country’s ability to ramp up imports from Germany and reduce dependence on Russia. 
 
Azerbaijan: The COP29 climate summit host has become the 156th country to join the Global Methane Pledge group, pledging to cut its emissions of gas by 30% by 2030.

Czech Republic: Canadian gas company MCF Energy has signed an agreement to acquire six oil and gas production and exploration licenses within the Carpathian Mountains.

Libya: Greenstream pipeline flows to Italy restarted after worker protests. 

Ukraine: Amid continuing market speculation, energy minister German Galushchenko has ruled out any commercial agreements that would see any Russian gas continuing to flow through the country after the current transit deal lapses at the end of this year.

U.S.: Democratic senators Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown have introduced a bill aiming to ban the export of LNG to China and other U.S. adversaries. 

U.S.: Three gas pipeline proposals in North Carolina involve acute environmental justice implications for the state’s disadvantaged communities.

The Gas Graph


Via a new InfluenceMap report, fossil fuel financing from Canada’s “big five” commercial banks has outpaced that of European and U.S. banks.

Europe’s unnecessary gas infrastructure binge continues — new report: The Europe Gas Tracker Report 2024, published by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), spells out the extent to which Europe’s gas crisis infrastructure response is in danger of vastly overshooting the continent’s declining gas demand needs, and risks billions in stranded assets as well as huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The new GEM data captures the development of 248.7 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) in new LNG import capacity and 16,491 kilometers in new gas transmission pipelines, which includes cross-border pipelines capable of importing a further 46 bcm/y of gas into Europe. In the last year alone, and as gas storage volumes have brimmed at record levels, the slate of new projects in development has grown by 9% for LNG import capacity and 18% for gas pipelines length. For LNG and pipeline projects that are already in the construction stage, GEM estimates that full use of this infrastructure could result in an additional 195 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the equivalent of the annual emissions of 50 coal plants. An executive at the Belgian gas infrastructure company Fluxys, meanwhile, has said that European developers of new, long-term onshore regasification terminals are unlikely to opt for “pure” LNG facilities. The “multimolecule aspect” — meaning synthetic methane, the shipping of carbon dioxide for further use, or the importing of ammonia to produce hydrogen — is expected to become a lot more prominent, according to Arno Bux, Fluxys’ Chief Commercial Officer. (Global Energy Monitor [Pdf], Energy Intelligence)

Mexico’s Pemex approves sustainability plan to lure green investors: The board of debt-ridden Pemex has approved an environmental, social, and governance plan that has been in the making for the past year and will see the state-owned company striving to achieve a 30% reduction in its methane emissions by 2030. The cash-strapped company, which currently has debts of over US$100 billion, had been asked by some of its international financiers to develop and sign off on the sustainability plan as a condition of renewing credit lines that are up for renegotiation later this year. Other than those specific renegotiations, the move may also encourage additional investments from more sustainability-focused investors. Pemex has committed to devote 14–18% of its capital expenditure in 2024 to various targets under the new plan. The company’s sustainability turn was swiftly followed by news that it is engaged in talks with billionaire investor Carlos Slim over how to revive the Lakach gas field, the already twice-shelved, major deepwater project in the Gulf of Mexico. (Bloomberg, Pipeline & Gas Journal)

Cyprus and Chinese consortium remain at loggerheads over struggling LNG import project: The saga over the long-delayed floating import terminal at the port of Vasilikos continues, with negotiations between the Cypriot government and the project’s Chinese-led construction consortium seemingly little advanced over the last month. Energy Minister George Papanastasiou remains defiant that the 2 million tons per year capacity import project must be completed as talks have escalated to the governmental level with Chinese authorities. However, the minister did not rule out Cyprus walking away from the deal with the consortium altogether if a satisfactory solution over contract disputes is not found. (Cyprus Mail)

Supply and demand predicament is pushing Uzbekistan towards greater reliance on Russian imports: Although still ranked as the world’s fifteenth largest gas producer, rapidly declining reserves combined with sharply rising domestic demand is forcing the Central Asian state into deeper dependence on Russian imports. A recently published decree from the Uzbek government foresees a US$500 million investment drive until the end of this decade to fund an expansion in gas transit capacity geared towards more than tripling Russian imports, which started up for the first time only in October 2023. Funding support for this is to be sourced from unspecified foreign lenders, and could include the EBRD, a multilateral public funder on whom Tashkent still relies. (Eurasianet, Business New Europe)

Gas supply crisis fears mounting in South Africa: Alarm bells continue to ring in South African media reporting and commentary, alongside calls for urgent government intervention, regarding the monopoly gas supplier Sasol’s warning that gas supply to the country’s industrial consumers is on course to be cut off by June 2026. Warning of looming deindustrialization hitting the national economy, Jaco Human, CEO of the Industrial Gas Users Association of Southern Africa, commented that “Many industries have already been forced to halt investment and growth plans due to the risk of a gas-energy shortage.” Human believes the next four months are crucial for the government to act on a series of mitigation measures aimed at bolstering gas supplies entering into South Africa from neighboring Mozambique via existing pipelines. Meanwhile, TotalEnergies has acquired another gas exploration block in South Africa’s area of the Orange Basin off the West Coast. The French company was joined by QatarEnergy in ongoing deep water exploitation also involving Namibia’s side of the Orange Basin. (Cape Business News, Reuters) 

Decoding the EU Methane Regulation, Climate Action Network Europe and Food & Water Action Europe, February 29, 2024. [Pdf]

This 15-page briefing examines the compromise agreement reached last year, which is  expected to enter into law in summer 2024, that marks the EU’s first regulatory attempt to cut methane emissions internally and through measures for fossil fuel imports. 

Central and Eastern Europe beyond gas imports, Ember, March 5, 2024. 
Ahead of next month’s Three Seas Initiative summit, the regional framework’s member countries need to dial down their gas expansion plans when total domestic production and gas import capabilities through LNG terminals and pipelines is set to exceed demand by 40% by 2030.