Natural Gas Market Flips to Seeking Outlet: Vitol

Planned natural gas production growth needs an outlet as the phase of record prices supressing demand has largely passed, Vitol CEO Russel Hardy said, cited by Bloomberg.

• Hardy was speaking at the Energy Institute conference as part of International Energy Week.
• “We have gotten literally from trying to discourage demand over the last two years, to preserve gas, to now probably needing to find demand, to find some homes for gas,” Hardy said.
• Growing LNG production requires additional demand to absorb the growth in supply.
• Current prices are encouraging some customers to switch back to gas from other fuels. However, there is still a large amount of coal demand to displace in China and India.
• Hardy said that gas is down to about 10% of Brent, closer to its long-term price averages.