Two LNG Cargoes Delay Europe Arrival as Floating Storage Increases

Two LNG vessels have delayed arrival into NW Europe until the middle of October as a sign of increasing use of floating storage according to Bloomberg ship tracking.

• Methane Julia Louise will delivery into the UK on 14 Oct instead of 24 Sep and Energy Atlantic is idling off France with delivery delayed until 15 Oct. Sonangol Etoshawill is due to Zeebrugge one week later than previously planned on 3 Oct.
• Around nine floating storage cargoes were counted off Europe earlier according to ICIS this week while LNG volume at sea for at least 20 days was up to the highest since July at 2.82m metric tonnes according to Bloomberg.
• Northwest Europe has received 31 cargoes so far this month with another 13 cargoes currently scheduled before the end of the month. Total LNG imports into NW Europe in August were 53 cargoes with 52 in July.
• Annual maintenance at US LNG export terminal is however a risk to European supplies with 59% of the cargoes scheduled this month originating from the US including 18 of the shipments already arrived.
• Cove Point has this week started a four week outage for maintenance. There are five trains across the Sabine Pass, Corpus Christi, and Cameron totalling close to 5bcf/d of feedgas demand that have not undergone full maintenance in more than three years according to Goldman Sachs.