The LNG ways in the European market are inscrutable: there is more gas from Russia, and the United States earns less

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the Neft and Capital magazine on the current competition in the European LNG market.

"The European market is more efficient for Russian companies, it requires fewer gas carriers. In one year, it is to Europe that the largest number of flights with LNG supplies can be made (from Yamal LNG, from medium-tonnage projects in Russia and even from Arctic LNG 2). In fact, the EU market has no alternative for Russia.

Of course, if necessary, it is possible to redirect exports to Asia, but these are additional costs and problems with an insufficient number of gas carriers. As long as the European market is open, LNG from Russia will go there. The direction will change only when there is no choice left," the expert explains.

Alexey Belogoryev stressed that this feature applies not only to Russia. This largely affects such traditional LNG suppliers in Europe as Norway and Algeria. Due to their geography, they are also tied to the region and will always send LNG first to the EU, and only then to other destinations.

"Qatar and the United States are more mobile in this regard. The Middle Eastern kingdom, like its neighbors, is quite close and at somewhat the same distance for the market of the West and the East. In a certain sense, the United States is also convenient to work in all directions: that from the east coast across the Atlantic, that from the west — across the Pacific Ocean to Asia.

For the United States, reducing LNG supplies to Europe is a matter of price, and for Russia, increasing exports to the EU is a matter of logistics. There are countries that can afford greater mobility in the global LNG trade, and there are those who are tied to the region," the analyst concluded.