Future liquefied natural gas business structure: a review and comparison of oil and liquefied natural gas sectors

摘要

The liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade provides the means of trading gas globallyrnand represents about 10% of the gas trade. The forecasts show the LNG businessrnwill grow, over the next 20 years, at about twice the rate of the whole gas trade.rnAlthough the current state of LNG trade is well studied, the literature on thernfuture business structure of it is limited and conflictual. This work considers thernfuture LNG business structure by comparing the development trajectories of thernoil and LNG sectors. In addition, it assesses the conclusions drawn by researchersrnagainst this background and the current pattern of change in the industry. Therncomparison involves three stages: (1) trade flows—oil and LNG trade flows arernvery similar, mainly due to the common distribution of the oil and gas reserves.rn(2) Supply chain configuration—the international trade for both fuels is tankerrnbased thus allowing for a similar market responsive trade policy, i.e., real-timerndestination selection (spot sale) at a global scale. (3) Institutional developments—rnthe current transparent and competitive global oil trade, with prices dominatedrnby physical and paper markets, was driven previously by long-term contracts, inrnthe same manner as the current LNG business. This analysis, together with transactionrncost economics, supports the argument that, in future, LNG spot trade willrnincrease and give rise to a competitive and globally unified LNG market. Furthermore,rnLNG pricing will become transparent and would be dominated by physicalrnand paper markets benchmark prices.