The global supply of new liquefied natural gas could take longer to come on stream than expected by the International Energy Agency, with predictions differing by a year or more, Norway’s Equinor said on Tuesday.
The IEA expects a wave of LNG to come to market in late 2025 or into 2026 as projects are completed, its Director General Fatih Birol told a conference in Oslo, while Equinor said the extra supply would take longer to complete.
“On gas we see the additional supply coming a bit later – in 2027,” Irene Rummelhoff, the head of marketing, midstream and processing at Equinor, Europe’s biggest gas supplier, told the same conference.
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines, she specified this could also be from the end of 2026, based on the company’s market insight as a buyer of U.S. LNG and talks with project developers.
“We have a fairly good insight into when these will come on stream,” she said.
French rival TotalEnergies also recently pointed to 2027 as the most likely time for a next wave of LNG to become available, citing project delays.
A shortage of labour, inflation and equipment bottlenecks have pressured U.S. LNG developers and delayed some projects, while President Joe Biden’s January pause on approvals for new LNG export projects also created uncertainty.
Equinor has already signed LNG supply deals from new U.S. projects with Cheniere, beginning in 2026 and 2027, and does not expect any delays to these contracts, Rummelhoff said.
The eventual new supply would see gas prices ease and in turn demand picking up, but for this winter, the market remains tightly balanced, she said.
“If we get cold weather or colder weather than normal, I think we can see some real uptick in prices,” she added, while ruling out price spikes like those seen in 2022.
(Reporting by Nora Buli; editing by Jonathan Oatis)