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> As soon as Russian gas stops, ... Germany can almost instantly get American gas. Is it really so simple? Even if the domestic infrastructure is identical, yo
by iguy 6y ago
> As soon as Russian gas stops, ... Germany can almost instantly get American gas.
Is it really so simple? Even if the domestic infrastructure is identical, you need the port facilities (at both ends, with spare capacity), and you need ships.
Anyone know what sort of percentage of the world LNG shipping market today this would be? (To replace the whole Russian supply to Europe, say.) That would influence how easy it is to rent the ships you need.
Edit -- quick googling, Nord Stream 1 & 2 each 55 billion m^3/year max, the whole world's LNG fleet about 90 million m^3, liquid is 615 times the density, thus 55 billion m^3 total capacity of gas. So if every single LNG ship made one trip US-DE, that would replace a year of Nord Stream 1 alone. The trip is about 12 days, one way, at 20 knots.
Maybe I should google more but I thought lead times were also a constraint -- that gas pipelines are close to real-time, unlike oil, while renting some ships to sail across the atlantic would take a while. Anyone know the details?
- Tomte 6y agoAmerica is building those ports right now, because they have LNG to sell. Germany is building those ports right now, in order to placate the Americans. I have no idea whether it can substitute for the whole of Russian gas, probably not. But for Nord Stream 2, yes.
- vaduz 6y agoTotal capacity of the completed Nord Stream 1 (~55 bcma, billion cubic metres per year) and Yamal-Europe (~33 bcma) is barely sufficient to cover the German demand (~88.7 bcma in 2019), assuming no sales to Poland or Austria and other countries on the route of the latter - but one of the swan songs for Germany was the prospect of being the transit country for the remainder of the capacity that Nord Stream 2 was to bring (another 55 bcma!). It would also allow Germany and Russia to exert more political pressure on some of its neighbours, in particular on other central European countries (Poland, Slovakia, Austria) - it is not unreasonable these countries not exactly thrilled about the prospect. Not to mention, it helps in those times when Germany needs to give the finger to the US, of course. Plus there is the little thing that most existing terminals can't accept Q-class ships (i.e. vessels with capacity 200 thousand cubic metres), so it is not exactly possible to replace total demand with LNG - it's actually doubtful if you could even replace the ~9 bcma of Nord Stream 2 gas that was actually earmarked for Germany. We are talking different orders of magnitude here.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoWhere exactly do we build them? War schon irgendwo "Spatenstich"?
- iSnow 6y agoI am not an expert, so be kind, but I think you got a thing or two wrong: - Germany imported close to 110bn m^3 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/332218/gas-trade-imports-in-selected-countries-in-europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/332218/gas-trade-imports...) - a typical big LNG tanker has a capacity of 266,000 m^3 ( https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/lng-tanker https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/lng-tanker) - 110.000.000.000 / 266.000 = 413,533 trips or 1133 tankers unloading every day. Against the 90m m^3 "whole world fleet capacity" that's still a factor of 1222, so every single LNG tanker would have to do the USA <-> 4 times every day for this to work.
- iguy 6y agoI have literally never looked up these numbers before, so it's entirely possible I messed it up. But I think you might be missing a conversion factor, as it appears that tankers quote liquid volume, while pipelines quote gas (at 1 atm I presume). With that it becomes 2 ships/day, which could be in the ballpark.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoYou could look at https://www.gie.eu/index.php/gie-publications/maps-data/lng-map https://www.gie.eu/index.php/gie-publications/maps-data/lng-... which shows the already existing infrastructure and capacities. Also existing LNG-terminals in for instance Rotterdam, and the pipeline networks from there to Wilhelmshavn, Hamburg and Brunsbüttel. We don't even need that. It's non-sense. Uncle Sam is just angry about us giving our money to Russia instead of him. That's all. /me shrugs.
- iguy 6y agoThanks, that's a useful map.