Published on :
The European Union’s gas supply has never been so topical. What risk in 2025? 2030 or 2040? The Shift Project, a think tank on the energy transition, has studied different scenarios and, each time, it emerges that the European Union is more vulnerable than China.
Talking about the gas market in the coming years means above all dealing with two uncertainties. The first linked to the development of the situation in Ukraine, the second to the future of relations between Russia and the European Union. But at this stage, the geopolitical and military inventory pleads – according to the study by the Shift Project conducted on behalf of the Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy of the Ministry of Defense (DGRIS) – for the non- delivery, over the next few years, of a large part of the volumes covered by a contract between Russia and the European Union.
The question, to assess the fragility of the European Union to obtain supplies in the medium term, is to know how much this share will rise. But also to anticipate the level of European demand: the industry being faced with the need to change the model, its needs may no longer be the same in a few years.
China in a comfortable position
In the worst scenario, that of a stoppage of flows from Russia over time, 40% of the European supplies needed in 2025 would be unidentified, and almost the same in 2030. China, on the other hand, appears to be better covered by long-term contracts. term that she has signed as the European Union. By 2025, the coverage of its needs is 100%, and 85% by 2030.
European vulnerability implies a greater reliance on short-term contracts, which often implies higher and more volatile prices. It also means a larger supply on the LNG market. The already fierce competition between importing countries should only increase in this perspective, according to the Shift Project, which anticipates great precariousness on this market in 2025. In the event of a lasting halt in Russian deliveries to the European Union, global LNG demand is likely to suffer from endemic and severe supply shortfalls “, can we read in the report made public yesterday.
United States and Qatar, future masters of the LNG market?
To meet the demand that is not guaranteed by contracts, the States will have to turn to shale gas producers and to those who are home to conventional deposits that are not yet mature, half of the conventional deposits being exploited being matured. Given their capacity to develop extractions by 2030, the United States and Qatar could be the big winners, and even have a position of arbiter, according to the authors of the report.