Category Archives: natural gas

NAPEC ’24, Oran: Why does the EU insist Algeria develop hydrogen & a big pipeline despite Equinor & Shell refusals due to “no customers”?

I explain EU/German motives for seeking “green H2” import pipes, then (at time 11:30) questions I raised moderating at NAPEC re. EU-Algerian pipeline MOU.

Here’s my video from Oran, Algeria, after a very informative “Africa and Mediterranean Energy & Hydrogen Exhibition & Conference,” NAPEC 2024 (video highlights here). Two parts to my analysis:

First, (up to time 11:30) I explain the rationale and impetus for the EU drive for massive green hydrogen gas imports. This is primarily driven by Germany’s increasing desperation at being locked into over-reliance on weather-variable renewables, whose high prices are sparking its “deindustrialization,” especially after losing Russian gas pipeline imports due to Putin’s war on Ukraine, plus due to the own-goal shutting down of their zero-carbon, amortized (paid for) nuclear plants during the European energy crisis. (Note: I misspoke: “Grey” hydrogen would NOT have the CO2 stored, “Blue” would. Both are derived from natural gas.)

I also explain how this massive green hydrogen “fix” to “renewables fundamentalist” policy is a techno-panacea that simply cannot work. Then ..

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My Al Watan(Cairo): Iran would seek global energy crisis if an Israeli/USA strike threatened regime survival | IEA warns on EU winter gas

ENGLISH Interview | Al Watan, Cairo.  Thurs 10Oct24. 15 minutes
ARABIC Interview

At first, we focused on IEA warnings of a possible EU winder gas shortage due to supply-and-demand mismatches. I agree and expand on the IEA points.

Second, I explained that if Israel retaliates against Iran so strongly that it threatens the regimes survival, or is seen as intending to provoke regime change, then the Iranian leadership will have “nothing to lose” by in-turn escalating to the maximum. Aside from unleashing the maximum response of its proxies surrounding Israel, Tehran’s most potent weapon would be to spark a global oil and gas crisis.

Consider oil: Iran can either shut down the Straights of Hormuz (or simply make them unsafe for tankers) and/or, it can use missiles and drones to destroy significant parts of Saudi, UAE and other Gulf oil facilities, including perhaps even Azerbaijan’s as some Iranian propagandists have threatened.

Consider natural gas: Shutting the Straights or directly hitting Qatar’s massive LNG exports infrastructure would immediately stop Qatari LNG exports. As the world’s second largest LNG exporter, this would immediately cause a separate global natural gas crisis.

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My TRT Istanbul: Turkey’s new Shell LNG imports are “a big deal,” with Tom Marzec-Manser, ICIS

See my pre-interview research reference & notes below this post. Tom O’D.

This epitomizes today’s LNG-geostrategic nexus.

One way to look at the Turkey-Shell LNG deal is that Mr. Erdogan wants Turkey to avoid Germany’s blunder in relying heavily on Putin’s Russia for its imported natural gas. He obviously wants Turkey to diversify its natural gas imports. In this regard, the opening comment by Tom Marzec-Manser, head of Gas Analytics at ICIS, London, that “this is a big deal” for Turkey – is correct.

Turkey uses about 50 bcm (billion cubic meters) of natural gas per year. This is currently supplied almost entirely via pipelines, mainly from Russia, also from Iran and from Azerbaijan. As I pointed out, Mr. Erdogan is well aware how Putin cut off German and EU Russian gas supplies as a geostrategic weapon in preparation for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This plunged Germany and the entire EU into the acute 2022-2023 European energy crisis. Germany, especially, still has not fully recovered.

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