Report: North America and Asia to lead the global LNG market in liquefaction and regasification projects

The growth in the LNG industry is set to be driven by expansion in liquefaction and regasification markets in North America and Asia, according to a new GlobalData report.

The report, titled ‘H1 2016 Global Capacity and Capital Expenditure Outlook for LNG Terminals – Asia Leads in Planned Regasification Projects Announcements‘, provides an overview of the global scenario up to 2020. It states that North America is expected to be the market leader in planned liquefaction capacity, while Asia is poised to dominate the regasification capacity growth.

North America will be home to more than half of the planned liquefaction terminals that are to be commissioned by 2020 with 42 projects planned to come online during this period.

The liquefaction market will also experience an upswing in Australia with the Train 2 of Gladstone project starting production in Q2, 2016. Growth in this segment has been evident from the addition of Iran Floating, Damerjog and Gorskaya Floating terminals since November 2015.

The growth of regasification capacity in Asia will be propelled by the surge in demand for natural gas, mainly in India, China and Japan. India and China are expected to invest $17.1bn from 2016 to 2020 on regasification projects, leading to an increase in the capacity by 7.4tcf.

The number of projects initiated in this segment since November 2015 is 13, some prominent names being Egypt Floating III, Port Qasim Floating II, Port Qasim Floating III and Porto de Sergipe Floating.

GlobalData’s report further predicts that North American companies including Cheniere Energy, United LNG and Orca LNG will replace Qatar Petroleum as the leader in terms of liquefaction capacity in 2020.

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, China Petrochemical Corporation and Excelerate Energy are expected to be leaders in construction of regasification terminals in 2020, ending the dominance of Korea Gas Corporation.