Floating LNG: lack of vessels could stymie a good option for Europe

European capitals will welcome the promise by US president Joe Biden to deliver more natural gas to Europe. There are not many floating terminals that can turn gas into gas.

America can offer a virtual gas line to Europe. Biden promised to find 15 billion cubic metres for Europe, but his export capacity is full. Some of that will be diverted from Asian spot cargo routes. Everything helps, even though that only replaces a tenth of Russia's supply.

Germany, which has no regasification terminals open yet, wants to use floating terminals to receive gas from the ocean, convert it to gas and send it on to networks. If you can locate them, you can set up floating storage and regasification units in a year.

Plans for floating terminals were announced by France on Monday. For good reason. It can take four years to build a regasification terminal.

About 25% of the capacity of the bigger plants is taken by the FSRU. The time advantage makes renting these for $140,000 a day worthwhile over the course of a few years.

It's another thing to get hold of these FSRUs. Most of the vessels built since the beginning of the year exist. Supply will not improve soon with no new orders recorded.

The shipyards could do well in the next couple of years. Korean shipbuilders dominate the construction of FSRUs which cost up to $350 million to build from scratch.

BW Gas, Hoegh LNG and New Fortress Energy control over half of the fleet. US listed shares of the related Hoegh LNG Partners and New Fortress Energy have recently surged. An initial public offering is planned by another company.

It looks like finding new sources of natural gas for Europe is hard. It would take a lot more of these floating vessels to get the molecules where they are most needed.