Singapore: Asia needs to establish a regional spot market for natural gas trading to reduce its high acquisition costs, the International Energy Agency (IEA) chief said Monday at a conference in Shanghai.
Referring to Shanghai — which established a domestic natural gas spot trading platform in July — IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven said the whole region needs a similar platform.
“I think it's of the utmost importance that in Asia there needs … to be developed a spot market for gas because it's not there at the moment,” she said.
“Japan imported LNG at US$18 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) this summer, compared to US$3 MMBtu prices in the United States and US$10 to US$12 in Europe,” she added.
An IEA report issued in June estimated that global natural gas consumption will rise 17 percent to 3.94 trillion cubic meters by 2017 from 2011, with Asia leading the growth.
“Asia will be by far the fastest-growing region, driven primarily by China, which will emerge as the third largest gas user by 2013,” the report said.
Van der Hoeven said Singapore was “in a good position” to be the first to establish a similar platform to Shanghai’s that serves the region.
“Its key location, experience with oil trading, advanced institutional development, they are all major advantages,” she said. [23/10/12]
