Secretary Perry: U.S. LNG To Remain Competitive To Russian Gas

The price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that the United States is exporting to Europe will stay competitive to Russian pipeline gas supplies in the long term, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said at a conference in Slovenia on Wednesday.  

“This idea that somehow ... LNG can’t compete with pipelined gas is just false,” Reuters quoted Secretary Perry as saying on the sidelines of the conference, as the United States is authorizing additional volumes of LNG exports, calling its LNG “freedom gas.”

Commenting on the first LNG shipment from the Cameron LNG Export Facility in Louisiana last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said that “Not only have thousands of JOBS been created in USA, we’re shipping freedom and opportunity abroad!” 

The downward pressure on LNG prices will continue in the future, and the United States has massive reserves of natural gas, Secretary Perry said in Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana today.

As early as in November last year, U.S. officials and LNG developers said at a gas conference in Berlin that as American LNG costs continue to fall, and as Europe looks to untangle itself from Russia’s Gazprom, U.S. LNG exports are quickly becoming a welcome alternative to Russian gas supplies.  

The United States is all too happy to help Europe increase its energy security by diversifying its natural gas supplies—in which Gazprom holds more than a third of the market.

Referring to the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, Secretary Perry said today that the United States still has the option of slapping sanctions on the project, but he didn’t go into any details.

“We think it’s a bad idea to rely on a single source of energy and that’s basically what you get with the Nord Stream 2, and Europe is seeing first hand that Russia will cut your gas off,” Perry said on Wednesday.   

At the CERA Week in Houston in March this year, Secretary Perry said:

“Thanks to innovation…we have more than enough energy to share with the world… and with it comes freedom of choice for energy consumers everywhere…including places where it had never existed.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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