The Mideast's gas paradox

It is home to the world's biggest exporter—and also some of its fastest-growing consumers. Yet intra-regional trade remains thin

The Middle East's transformation from swaggering liquefied natural gas-export hub to insurgent global demand hub continues apace. With domestic demand for gas pushing ever higher, the region's tight band of long-term importing countries—the UAE, Kuwait and Israel—has been expanded in the past couple of years with new entrants Jordan and Egypt. The latter two were among the fastest-growing LNG importing countries last year, amid a rapid deployment of floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) starting in 2015. FSRUs have enabled the Middle East's new LNG importers to capitalise on fluctuating price trends. The region's apparently insatiable appetite for spot LNG cargoes has played a la