Energy Agency: Europe saved $ 8 billion in gas bill last year

Economy and stock exchange

LONDON [Reuters] – Europe saved $ 8 billion from its natural gas bill last year because of rising US oil production and reforms in EU energy markets that forced Russia to change its gas pricing mechanism, the head of the International Energy Agency said on Friday.

With the International Energy Agency issuing its annual gas report, Fatih Birol said 2018 was a "golden year" for natural gas, which accounts for 45 percent of the world's total energy growth, which in turn was the fastest in two decades.

He said the shift in global gas markets caused by the US rocky gas revolution, the rapid expansion of the LNG sector and the liberalization of the European energy markets forced Russia to change the pricing of oil-related gas.

The change began when the rise in US gas production led Qatar, the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, to convert liquefied natural gas [LNG] supplies to Europe, leading to a change in pricing on the continent and the widening impact of the benchmark price index. The Dutch.

"Because of the great challenge of liquefied natural gas [LNG] and the improvement of regulations, there has been a lot of renegotiation of pipeline contracts and we estimate that in 2018, the price of Russian pipeline exports has dropped by $ 8 billion compared to what it would have been at the traditional oil link," he said.

"If the European Union's guidelines were fully adopted, we could see more LNG flowing into central Europe at $ 0.50 per million British thermal units [BTU] than TTF would have resulted in additional savings of $ 1.3 billion Annually. "

In its annual report, the agency predicted that the LNG market will grow by 26 percent from now to 2024 to 546 billion cubic meters as China becomes the largest buyer and the United States for the biggest seller.