India, Japan push for group LNG buying

Advertisement
dfwe

From LNGworldnews:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi agreed to extend the cooperation between the two countries on a wide range of areas including LNG.

With the goal of recognising the critical dependence of the economies on imported energy sources and the vulnerability to supply shocks, the two Prime Ministers affirmed their intention to further strengthen energy cooperation through the India-Japan energy dialogue by signing the Tokyo Declaration for global partnership.

According to the declaration, ministers share the intention to explore a higher level of strategic collaboration in the global oil and natural gas market through joint procurement of LNG and joint efforts to promote flexible LNG markets.

Other large buyers have already been invited to join in Korea and Singapore, though nothing has yet come of that so far. It’s a fascinating development and one that has the potential to drive a wedge deep into not only Australia’s gas export revenues but its geopolitics.

Advertisement

There is a countervailing suppliers group called the Gas Exporting Counties Forum. Australia is neither a member nor observer but we’re just about the only one with Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, UAE and Venezuela all card carrying members. Observers include Iraq, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Oman and Norway.

The only few gas suppliers outside of the group are Australia, Canada and the US. You might rightly ask why Australia hasn’t joined the Russian-led GECF given it has the explicit goal of securing long term contracts and the oil-price benchmark.

I guess we figure we can do that from outside as well, without appearing to support Vladimir Putin!

Advertisement
About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.