The United States will be the global leader in newly-built liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction capacity between 2019 and 2023, data and analytics company GlobalData said in a new report.
The increase in the U.S. of 157 million tons per year (mtpa) of liquefaction capacity will account for 73 percent of total global LNG capacity growth through 2023, according to GlobalData.
The U.S. will be followed, at quite a distance, by Canada and Russia, which will see their LNG liquefaction capacity grow by 19 mtpa and 15 mtpa, respectively.
LNG liquefaction capacity in the world is forecast to jump by 53 percent from now until 2023, GlobalData's report found. Among regions, North America will host the most new-build capacity from planned and announced projects.
North America will contribute 82 percent to total LNG liquefaction global growth, GlobalData said at the end of last month.
"In North America, 21 planned and announced projects are expected to start operations by 2023. Of these, the Rio Grande terminal in Texas has the highest LNG liquefaction capacity by 2023 with 17.6 mtpa," said Dipayan Chakraborty, Oil and Gas Analyst at GlobalData.
North America will be followed by Russia and the former Soviet Union region, where the Arctic-2 and the Baltic LNG projects stand out. Third comes Africa, where the Coral Floating terminal in Mozambique will be the largest upcoming liquefaction terminal in the region with a new-build capacity of 3.4 mtpa by 2023, Charaborty said.
Meanwhile, U.S. LNG exports continue to rise as more export liquefaction capacity is coming online. Based on tanker loadings data from Bloomberg, EIA estimated in August that U.S. LNG exports set new records in June and July 2019 at 4.8 Bcf/d and 5.2 Bcf/d, respectively
Over the next few years, Qatar, Australia, and the U.S. will be in tense competition over who will be the world's top LNG exporter.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More