On February 20, 1959, the world's first LNG carrier, the
Methane Pioneer
, docked in England from Louisiana, its tank loaded with liquefied natural gas (LNG).
A breath of fresh air for the United Kingdom, marked by the deadly smog episode in London in 1952. Ultimately, the British will buy their gas closer, in Norway, the Netherlands and then the North Sea.
It will be sixty years before American gas returns to sea to Europe.
In just seven years, the shale gas revolution has made the United States the world's largest LNG exporter by 2023, ahead of Australia and Qatar.
And in less than two years, American gas has taken half of the LNG market in Europe, a fifth of the gas market (behind Norway).
This is the first of the factors which enabled Europe to cope with the disruption in Russian gas supplies, which fell from 50% to less than 15% of its purchases between the start of 2021 and the end of 2022. The Old Continent was able to spend the winter of 2022-2023…
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