How Japan ignored climate critics and built a global natural gas empire
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Every six hours, somewhere in the world, an LNG shipment controlled by a Japanese company leaves a port. However, these tankers are only the tip of the iceberg

A thread 🧵
bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-…
Japan began importing LNG in 1969 (see attached thread about that)

Over the last 50+ years, the Japanese government and its companies have worked together to unlock new supplies from Brunei and Malaysia to Indonesia and Russia

https://x.com/SStapczynski/status/1191158532902539269

Malaysia founded the oil & gas giant Petronas 50 years ago today, adding to a wave of countries nationalizing lucrative fuel supplies 🇲🇾 🛢️

Here is a short thread of about the creation of Petronas, one of the most important and influential Asian fossil fuel producers🧵 Shell discovered Malaysia’s first oil well in 1910

(Shell first commenced operations in Malaysia in 1891)

“The Grand Old Lady” produced for decades, and put Sarawak on the map

An LNG tanker docked at a sanctioned Russian facility has no insurer, is managed by a little known Indian company and is pretending to be somewhere else
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This is how Russia is trying to circumvent US measures against its new Arctic LNG project 🧵
bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Russian gas/LNG had largely avoided sanctions since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine

That changed in Nov 2023, when the US imposed sanctions against the new Arctic LNG 2 project

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The dark horse of US LNG 🇺🇸🐴

A decade ago, an ex-banker & lawyer were driving across Texas in a rental car trying to raise money for an LNG export project

Today, they're the billionaire owners of Venture Global ensnared by politics and angry customers
bloomberg.com/news/features/… For nearly half a century, the LNG industry was dominated by petrostates and Big Oil

The shale boom upended that, shifting the advantage to the US and opening the door to entrepreneurs, like Venture Global

These outsiders propelled the US to become the world's top LNG exporter

How US sanctions are strangling Putin’s ambitions to grow LNG exports
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Arctic LNG 2 has been ready to start exports for months

And yet it sits virtually idle, the first piece of Russia’s energy complex to be halted by US restrictions

A thread 🧵

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Some background:

🚢 Russia has long sought to increase its share of the global LNG market, but the war and the subsequent sharp drop in pipeline gas Europe have reinforced the importance of these ambitions

Moscow wants to expand LNG output three-fold by 2030

HOW LNG IS MAKING QATAR RICH 🇶🇦🚢

The Gulf nation of Qatar is setting itself up to control about a quarter of all liquefied natural gas production by the end of the decade -- and with it, a growing share of the world's wealth and influence

A thread 🧵

bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Qatar unveiled last week plans to boost LNG export capacity another 13% on top of previously announced projects, together lifting production from 77 million tons/year to 142 million tons by 2030

This will make the rich nation (with a population of just 2.7 million) much richer

THE US LNG MIRACLE 🇺🇸🚢

This is the story of how the US became the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas in less than a decade, drastically rewriting global energy trade

Thread below 🧵👇 The world's first overseas LNG shipment was exported from Louisiana to the UK on the Methane Pioneer over 60 years ago

The US pioneered the large-scale process to chill natural gas to -256F, transforming it into a liquid. Liquefying gas makes the fuel occupy 600-times less space

A HISTORIC WAVE OF LNG PROJECTS BEGINS THIS YEAR
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It took half a century for the energy industry to develop the first several hundred million tons of LNG export capacity

Now, the industry has the potential to do it again in six years

bloomberg.com/news/features/…
This enormous buildout of LNG export capacity from Qatar to the US will cement the role of natural gas in energy transition

Much of this new LNG supply will go to China, but even the EU has agreed to buy shipments past 2050, despite ambitious green goals

HOW ENERGY TRADERS LEFT A COUNTRY IN THE COLD

Pakistan, one of the world’s poorest nations, thought it had secured natural gas to fuel its economy

Commodities firms had other ideas

Full story with @FaseehMangi 👇

bloomberg.com/features/2023-…
LNG traders began diverting shipments meant for Pakistan into the more lucrative spot market when price began to significantly rise

Canceled LNG shipments from 2021 helped prompt an energy crisis in Pakistan

I asked ChatGPT to make a picture of an LNG tanker

For every 10 likes, I’ll ask it to make the LNG even more super chilled “Make it even more super chilled”

The world is running out of time for carbon capture & storage to make a meaningful impact ⏰

💰 CCS is seen as a crucial green solution, but it needs $4.5 trillion of investment THIS DECADE to gain traction
🧵 A thread about the controversial technology

bloomberg.com/features/2023-… I recently went to one of the world’s largest CCS facilities ✈️ 🇦🇺

Chevron is capturing and storing CO2 at its Gorgon liquefied natural gas export project on a remote island in Australia

It was the size of a city block, very loud and eye opening

Japan is set to release over 1 million tons of water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant 🇯🇵☢️

Why are they doing this? Is it safe? This is what you need to know 👇🧵

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 💦 Since the 2011 earthquake & tsunami, hundreds of cubic meters of groundwater enter the Fukushima plant on a daily basis, mix with the melted fuel and become contaminated

The tainted water is pumped out and run through a process to remove almost all of the radioactive elements

These niche commodities show how China's economy is stuttering 🇨🇳🧵

📌 GLASS
➡️ Futures plunged ~20% in the past month due to China's teetering property market and weaker vehicle output
➡️ China makes up half of the world’s plate glass production

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 📌 STYRENE
➡️The price of styrene monomer, a material used for the plastics and rubber that go into appliances like fridges, is dropping
➡️ Dalian futures fell last week to their lowest since February 2021, after a near-5% drop in home appliance sales in the first quarter

A growing gas glut means that US LNG buyers may soon cancel shipments 🇺🇸⚠️🚢

🙅 If gas prices in Europe/Asia plunge more, it may not make economic sense to export LNG from the US
👀 That's a big reversal to last year, when Europe was facing gas shortages

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… US LNG contracts are very flexible and usually allow for buyers to cancel deliveries 🇺🇸

📝 The purchasers must provide two months’ advance notice to LNG producers
📅 This means that any decisions around September loadings would be made in the month of July

I visited one of Japan’s oldest coal mines 🇯🇵 ⛏ 🪨

Today it is shut and Japan is currently very dependent on imported fossil fuels

But it wasn’t always like that. A century ago, Japan had a booming coal industry

A nerdy thread 🧵🤓 Even up until the 1960s, Japan had a formidable coal industry 💪

More than half of the energy the nation consumed in 1965 was produced within Japan

Now it is roughly 10%, which is why Japan currently has a reputation for being very dependent on overseas fuel

The world is rallying behind nuclear power after last year’s energy crisis

Here is a thread of recent public opinion polls in support of nuclear ☢️ 🧵 🇬🇧 A UK poll found a 25% increase in net support for new nuclear power since June 2021

https://t.co/x8mEEHgx1jworld-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Polls…

China massively accelerated its coal power plans in 2022 🇨🇳❤️🪨

📝 Local governments permitted 106GW of new plants, the most since 2015, says CREA
🚧 Construction has started on 50GW, 6-times more than in the rest of the world combined

Via @danmurtaugh

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… “China continues to be the glaring exception to the ongoing global decline in coal plant development"

Ford's EV pickup is built from metal that's damaging the Amazon rainforest 🚗⚠️

🏭 Bloomberg investigation traced much of the aluminum in the F-150 to a refinery in Brazil accused of sickening thousands of people
💧 Rivers are polluted with toxic metals

bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-… The transition to EVs needs aluminum. Lots of it

⛏️ A typical North American car contains about 500 pounds of aluminum, almost twice the amount 20 years ago, and electric vehicles have about 150 pounds more

China is taking control of the LNG market 🇨🇳 🚢

📝 China is rushing to sign the most long-term LNG purchase agreements of any nation
💰 They are then reselling some of that supply to the highest bidders in Europe/Asia, becoming a key intermediary

bloomberg.com/news/articles/… “China is evolving from being a rapidly growing import market to playing a more flexible role with an increased ability to balance the global LNG market,” Shell said in its annual LNG outlook report released last week 🇨🇳 🚢

The power of nuclear energy 🇯🇵☢️💰

📉 Japan's electricity bills are ~40% cheaper in regions with more nuclear reactors online
💸 Tokyo must depend more on coal/LNG because its reactors are idled. That became very costly due to the global energy crunch

nikkei.com/article/DGKKZO… Tepco was forced to ask the government to hike rates even more due to surging fuel costs 💰

Regional utilities in Kansai and Kyushu (which have a bunch of reactors online) did not

asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energ…

MAJOR SHIFT: Pakistan is abandoning its LNG expansion plans because the fuel is too expensive, and instead will use more coal
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🚢"LNG is no longer part of the long-term plan," Energy Minister told Reuters
🏭 Pakistan to QUADRUPLE coal power capacity

reuters.com/business/energ… Pakistan was betting BIG on LNG roughly a decade ago when the fuel was cheap and abundant

Their energy minister told me in 2016 that they wanted to import 60 million tons/year by 2025 -- which would make it one of the world's top buyers of the fuel

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…