{"id":6682,"date":"2023-05-11T16:44:20","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T16:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=6682"},"modified":"2023-05-11T16:44:20","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T16:44:20","slug":"aramco-weighs-lng-exports-as-hydrogen-talks-prove-tough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=6682","title":{"rendered":"Aramco Weighs LNG Exports as Hydrogen Talks Prove Tough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
Saudi Aramco is weighing exports of liquefied natural gas instead of blue hydrogen, as talks with potential buyers of the latter fuel prove tough.<\/div>\n<\/address>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

The world\u2019s biggest oil company is investing billions of dollars in gas production. It\u2019s priority is to meet rising demand within Saudi Arabia and then convert what\u2019s left over into blue hydrogen, a fuel seen as important for the energy transition because the carbon emitted when it\u2019s made is meant to be captured.<\/p>\n

Yet existing technology means blue hydrogen could cost the equivalent of around $250 a barrel of oil, Aramco\u2019s chief executive officer said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very difficult to identify any off-take agreement in Europe\u201d for blue hydrogen, Amin Nasser said on a call with analysts on Tuesday. \u201cEven the customers in Japan and Korea are waiting for government incentives. Until they get these incentives, it\u2019ll be costly for them to pursue that blue hydrogen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company won\u2019t make a final investment decision to build hydrogen export facilities without first signing supply deals, he said. It\u2019s so far sent\u00a0test shipments\u00a0in the form of ammonia to South Korea and Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very expensive program,\u201d Nasser said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of capital and you need customers. So we will not sanction a project without securing an off-take agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The kingdom has some of the world\u2019s biggest gas reserves but barely exploited them in the past. Demand for gas has boomed recently, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine and cut supplies to Europe in retaliation against sanctions.<\/p>\n

Much of Saudi Arabia\u2019s additional gas will come from Jafurah, one of the\u00a0world\u2019s largest untapped fields. It aims to spend tens of billions of dollars developing it and has started discussions with investors in midstream projects such as pipelines, said Nasser.<\/p>\n

Sinopec and TotalEnergies SE are among companies considering investing in those projects,\u00a0Bloomberg reported\u00a0this month.<\/p>\n

Nasser spoke shortly after Aramco reported a net profit of $31.9 billion for the first quarter and announced a plan to\u00a0increase its $76 billion annual dividend.<\/p>\n

It had decided to prioritize blue hydrogen because it\u2019s seen as a cleaner fuel than LNG, Nasser said.<\/p>\n

Still, even if Aramco doesn\u2019t export LNG from Saudi Arabia, it\u2019s keen on investing in foreign terminals, including in the US and Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have started discussions with our partners globally on LNG opportunities,\u201d he said,\u00a0confirming a Bloomberg report\u00a0from March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Aramco is weighing exports of liquefied natural gas instead of blue hydrogen, as talks with potential buyers of the latter fuel prove tough. The world\u2019s biggest oil company is investing billions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[40,46,48,50,57,68,76,77,78,79,80,82,86,87,88,90,95,96,98,99,103,107,109,111,112,114,121,123,137,139,146,148,153,159,174,176,181,182,184,187,196,201,202,203,209,217,221,222,229,231,232,233,239,241,244,246,249,250,251,252,256,262,263,266,268,277,279,280,283,285,288,300],"class_list":["post-6682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lng","tag-alleviation","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-athensenergydialogues","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-climateaction","tag-climatechange","tag-closure-of-nuclear","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-decarbonization","tag-democracy","tag-disputes","tag-doha","tag-east","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-market","tag-energyindustry","tag-europe","tag-european-fuels","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-hydrocarbons","tag-international","tag-lebanon","tag-liquefied-natural-gas","tag-maritime","tag-maritime-boundaries","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-mediterranean","tag-natural-gas","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-opec","tag-peace","tag-plants","tag-pollution","tag-poverty","tag-power","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-renewable-energy","tag-reserves","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-russia-in-the-european-energy-sector","tag-russian-gas","tag-russian-sanctions","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling","tag-sustainability","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-ukrain","tag-unclos","tag-usa","tag-300"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}