FSRU Wave Set To Land On The Shores Of Africa

Africa is turning to LNG imports as expected surpluses of LNG ensure prices could prove competitive against liquid fuels for a sustained period. Several import projects in development would use floating storage and regasification   units   (FSRUs)   to   provide   regasified   LNG   for   power generation.  Africa  is  hardly  a  first‐mover,  following  as  it  does  in  the footsteps of South America, South and East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. But with LNG prices set to remain under pressure from robust supply until around the turn of the decade and possibly longer, the FSRU wave could at last reach African shores. West Africa’s Ghana in the Gulf of Guinea has four competing projects and is the most likely candidate to be the first to receive LNG in Sub‐ Saharan Africa as it attempts to end electricity supply issues and utilise more of its installed generation capacity. The region, is unlikely to have enough demand to justify a flotilla of FSRUs in the near future, with competing projects likely to fall by the wayside. But LNG import agreements signed by parties in Ghana, Benin and Togo should mean at least one and perhaps two could come on stream sometime over the next couple of years. With the gas shortfall in Ghana alone estimated at over 18 Bcm (1.74 Bcf/d) – the equivalent of more than 13 MMt of LNG – in 2015 by the country’s Energy Commission, FSRU deployment will depend less on incremental demand, which is already there, but on infrastructure costs, LNG’s ability to compete with other fuels and the development of domestic resources. Click here to read full article