This report reviews the recently proposed amendment to the Gas Directive, as put forward by the European Commission, which has been submitted to the European Parliament and the Council of the EU in November of 2017.The proposed amendment suggests the extension of the Third Energy Package, to include gas import pipelines from third countries.This would mean that these import pipelines would also become subject to the four key principles of

The LNG industry finds itself today in a very different situation than was expected 10 years ago. Several key disruptions have occurred: shale gas turned the US from an LNG importer into an LNG exporter, imports to Japan boomed to replace nuclear electricity production after Fukushima, and European gas demand collapsed due to the combined effects of the global recession and cheap coal. There are new types of players in the market, spot-trading volumes have increased, and global prices have converged. But much remains the same.

The Trump administration’s approach to the traditional energy trilemma (the challenge of balancing the goals of cheap, secure and clean energy) appears set to skew heavily towards the low cost and secure aspects of energy supply at the expense of any focus on carbon emissions. While federal legislation, such as the Clean Power Plan (CPP), and U.S.

Global gas price convergence, predicted last year to take more than a decade to develop, is expected instead to arrive this year, as a direct result of the increase in short-term LNG trading, the relative over-supply of gas and the drop in oil price indexes.  One single global gas market is therefore now emerging, from the previously fragmented sub- markets, leading to new arbitrage opportunities which will emerge for players at all points along the value chain.  Major LNG players with global reach will certainly be able to take advantage of this change by the adoption of innovative portfol