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IEA: Record $50 Billion Investment for LNG in 2019

Written By Luke Burgess

Updated April 19, 2020

The International Energy Agency says the liquefied natural gas market has already received a record $50 billion in investments this year.

At the 2019 LNG Producer-Consumer Conference in Tokyo last week, the IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol told the audience, “This year, 2019 already broke the highest amount of (final investment decisions) for the first time ever, $50 billion.”

According to IEA figures, over 6 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of LNG capacity is due by the end of this year. This is a record that blasts through the previous high of 2.5 Tcf.

Where’s all this growth coming from?

China.

Birol told the conference last week, “The biggest growth is coming from China. In the next five years, about one-third of global LNG demand will come from China alone.”

The world’s largest importer of the fuel is currently Japan. However, Birol said China is expected to overtake Japan as the world’s #1 importer of LNG in five years.

Other Asian nations, like India, Pakistan, and Thailand, are also importing more LNG than ever.

European countries will begin importing more LNG over the next few years as well.

Back in May, the European Commission (EC) reported that LNG imports from the U.S. have increased by 272% since 2018. EC data shows record LNG imports coming from the U.S. in March 2019 totaling 49 billion cubic feet.

But that’s only the beginning.

A month earlier, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry signed two export orders that will more than double America’s LNG exports to 112 Bcf by next year.

And the European Commission says LNG imports could increase from there to 282 Bcf by 20

Tanker shipping LNG fuel

Tanker Shipping LNG Fuel

Fortunately for us, the mainstream market is too wrapped up in other more dramatic investing headlines to be concerned with boring old liquefied natural gas. Meatless hamburgers… CBD… crypto… meatless CBD crypto-burgers… these all dominate financial headlines instead.

But the smart money is betting big on LNG. Resident oil and natural gas expert Keith Kohl is putting his money in a newly discovered oil and natural gas region of Texas.

This massive area could rival some of the biggest American energy resource discoveries in history. And it could be the next millionaire-making area waiting to pay out to early investors.

You see, Texas is home to one of the most prolific tight oil and natural gas geologic basins in the world: the great Permian Basin.

And this is where makers of American LNG get their feedstock.

The Permian Basin has long been known to contain massive energy resources. But it wasn’t until the mid-2000s, with the advent of the new technologies hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, that the Permian Basin’s resources became available to producers.

Today, the Permian Basin is the largest producing oil field in the world, even bigger than Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar. The EIA reports oil production from the Permian currently at 4.2 million barrels per day. That’s compared to Ghawar’s production of 3.8 Mbbls/d.

The Permian Basin is not only the largest oil and gas region in the world right now in terms of production, but estimates of its underdeveloped energy resource are growing.

The United States Geological Survey recently reported an increase in technically recoverable resources from the Permian. The USGS now says the Texas Permian Basin contains 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 19.9 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

The Permian Basin has become the crown jewel of the American energy industry. But here’s the thing most people don’t know… the little secret Texas is hiding…

The Permian Basin is one of a small handful of other undeveloped oil and gas basins.

What that means is there could be more tight oil and gas in and around Texas than anyone ever thought, just waiting to be discovered and developed.

Keith Kohl says, “For sure, there are billions of barrels of recoverable oil in and around the Permian Basin that haven’t even been counted yet. Potentially trillions of dollars just waiting to be found.”

Right this minute, the Texas Permian is booming with activity. So much, in fact, that infrastructure around the area is being strained. Local authorities are dealing with electricity, water, and housing shortages as well as heavy truck traffic and quickly deteriorating roads.

Soon developers are going to be looking elsewhere. And that’s when these secret oil and gas basins in and around Texas are going to explode in popularity.

Keith recently published an entire report that discusses these “secret” oil and gas basins in Texas. I highly urge you to look into these alternative basins before Main Street learns about them.

Until next time,
Luke Burgess Signature
Luke Burgess

As an editor at Energy and Capital, Luke’s analysis and market research reach hundreds of thousands of investors every day. Luke is also a contributing editor of Angel Publishing’s Bull and Bust Report newsletter. There, he helps investors in leveraging the future supply-demand imbalance that he believes could be key to a cyclical upswing in the hard asset markets. For more on Luke, go to his editor’s page.

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