Lots of LNG

Australia and the US brought significant new supply on line. But who would buy it all?

In 2017, liquefied natural gas producers looked with hope to the future—and some worry at the present. Demand, they believed, would one day catch up. In the meantime, much new seaborne gas floated often aimlessly into the market. By early 2017, global nameplate liquefaction capacity had reached 340m tonnes a year, more than twice the number from 2005. Another 45m t/y was scheduled to start up by the end of 2017 too (and then another 30m in 2018, and more after that). The long-predicted flood of supply seemed, in 2017, to have arrived. Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and Cameroon all chipped in—or would by year-end - but the bulk of the LNG came from two countries. Australia in 2017 entered the f