Chevron expects LNG supply shortage by 2025

(Reuters) - Chevron Corp said it expected supply shortage in the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market by around 2025, echoing comments made last month by top LNG trader Royal Dutch Shell.

Demand for natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal and oil, has surged as countries such as China look to curb environmental pollution.

Chevron, owner of the giant Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects in Australia, said it expects global demand to be nearly 600 million metric tonne per annum (mmtpa) by 2035, while supply could be just about half of that.

“China’s demand is increasing significantly - they’ve had a very active program to move off of coal in heating industrial applications, and that’s pulled on LNG,” Pierre Breber, EVP -downstream at Chevron, said during the company’s analyst day, when asked about spot LNG prices.

China imported record levels of LNG in January, as the world’s second-largest economy shored up supplies ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

Shell in February estimated that more than $200 billion of investments in LNG is needed to meet the boom in demand by 2030.

The global LNG market is set to continue its rapid expansion into 2020 as facilities approved for construction in the first half of the decade come on line.

However, a decline in spending in the sector since 2014 will create a supply gap from the mid-2020s unless new investments emerge, Shell said in its 2018 LNG Outlook.

(Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

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