Talking about LNG coming from the US Gulf and also discussing oil. There is of course no way this is going to be able to replace Russian supplies overnight. I don’t know how much US Nat gas is surplus to their needs … much of what they use came via pipeline from Canada. Parts of the US East coast import LNG from the Carib suppliers due to lack of pipelines.
Clearly price is yet to be decided. Germany alone would be really difficult! I can’t imagine what the other European NATO countries would add up to? The lack of LNG import terminals in Germany … my head just exploded! Those things take a long time and ain’t cheap.
Anymouse
Around 95% of Germany's natural gas is imported, of which around half is re-exported. 55% of gas imports come from Russia, 30% from Norway and 13% from the Netherlands. As of 2022, Germany does not have LNG terminals, so all gas imports use pipelines.
U.S., EU reach LNG supply deal to cut dependence on Russia
There are multiple other articles associated with the link I posted. All are interesting including one where a German Engineer mentions that “everything is on the table” including the possibility of keeping the three remaining nuclear power plants operating for now. I have no idea if that is real information or just his hopes. Germany has a monster problem to get rid of Russian energy supplies and it won’t happen this year or next.
The lack of LNG import terminals in Germany … my head just exploded!
I imagine the pipelines are just too efficient to worry about ships. Interesting calculation. The average tanker holds 180,000 cum of LNG. To know how many tankers Germany needs per day we need to know their total NG gas use, and then convert LNG to gas.
1B cubic feed of natural gas is 45,000 cubic meters of LNG.
Germany uses 3.3 million million cubic feet per year, or 33,000 Bcf per year. This works out to 90 Bcf/day.
180,000 cum of LNG, at 45,000 cum per Bcf, is 4 billion cubic feet of gas per tanker.
This works out to about 23 average LNG ships per day to feed Germany. I wonder how long it takes to empty that tanker, and how many ports they would need to service 23 ships per day?
This works out to about 23 average LNG ships per day to feed Germany.
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Germany get 50% of its natural gas from Russia. So I think your calculation needs an update because my rough calculations show that Germany needs about 1 average LNG per day to eliminate natural gas imports from Russia.
I think the interim solution for Germany is to lease a couple of FSRUs and hook them into the German gas infrastructure. An FSRU is a Floating Storage Regasification Unit and basically converts LNG to gas. Most places that utilize an FSRU do not have great natural gas infrastructure, so the FSRU out-take serves as a nice throttling control. In Germany’s case, with the suggested demand, an FSRU would likely be working overtime on the regasification process - probably not the best situation over an extended period of time.
I have never done the actual math or seen it quoted in reports, but my guess is that a typical FSRU gets a re-supply every 3.5 => 6 weeks.
