US president Joe Biden’s promise to deliver more liquefied natural gas to Europe will be welcomed in continental capitals. But getting the gas into energy short Germany could be tricky thanks to a dearth of floating terminals to turn that LNG back into gas.
America can offer a virtual gas pipeline to Europe, using specialist LNG tankers. Its export capacity is fairly full but Biden still promised to find 15bn cubic metres for its European allies. Some of that will be diverted from Asian spot cargo routes already offering record-high prices. Though that only replaces less than a tenth of Russia’s supply, everything helps.
Germany, which has no regasification terminals open yet, wants to use floating terminals to receive LNG offshore, turn the fuel into gas and transfer it on to onshore networks. Floating storage and regasification units (FSRU) can be set up in under a year, if you can find them.