Two top European Union energy officials described on Tuesday the energy situation in EU as stable with a positive outlook.
“Across all the indicators, the outlook is quite positive,” Kadri Simson, EU Energy Commissioner, told a press conference after a meeting of EU Energy Ministers in Brussels this evening.
“The EU gas market is well supplied and liquid. Norway has just reaffirmed its intention to maintain its current record level supplies to Europe. As you know, flows from Norway increased by 10 bcm last year to 90 bcm, making Norway our most important gas supplier,” she said.
Simson noted that LNG imports also increased substantially last year, from 80 bcm in 2021 to 135 bcm last year.
The US became the EU’s main LNG supplier with 56.4 bcm. This is 34 bcm more than in 2021, said Simson.
Five new LNG projects are ongoing, with 50 bcm still to come by 2024, on top of the more than 20 bcm capacities commissioned last year, she said.
“TTF prices have gone down and are in the range of 40 euro (USD 43). The differential with Asian prices is now very narrow, but Europe still remains an attractive LNG destination,” she said.
The Title Transfer Facility, more commonly known as TTF, is a virtual trading point for natural gas price index in the Netherlands.
Simson stressed that “we will not go back to the status quo with Russia as our main gas supplier”.
She concluded that “despite some cautious optimism, we are still facing multiple challenges. We need decisive action on many fronts.” On her part, Ebba Busch, Swedish Minister for Energy told the joint press conference that “we now have a more stable energy situation with less volatile prices compared to last year”.
“The overall EU consumption of natural gas has dropped by 19.3 percent between August 2022 to January this year,” said Busch whose country holds the current EU Presidency.
Source: Kuwait News Agency