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Fracked Gas Imports Produced Europe’s Fossil Fuel Crisis

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Fossil Fuels

LNG terminal utilization rates reveal underlying problems

For years, the fossil fuel industry assured Europe that importing LNG and therefore more and more fracked gas would help avoid costly energy shortages. But the ongoing supply crisis – which has led to skyrocketing bills – shows how deepening our reliance on fossil fuels has been an expensive failure.

Imported liquified natural gas (LNG) is also a disaster for our environment and the climate. It is fossil gas that is chilled to -162 degrees and then transported via vessels to far-away destinations. The process is highly energy intensive: the energy needed just to operate all existing and planned US liquefaction terminals would create CO2 emissions equaling those of 24 coal power plants.  In fact, the entire supply chain of LNG is harming communities, impacted by air and water pollution from fracking, pipelines and the chilling of methane to create LNG.

Despite these issues, a significant portion of the EU’s energy needs are filled by this particularly dirty fuel, made possible by a global network of fossil fuel infrastructure that allows world leaders and oil and gas companies to manipulate supplies. These are the exact same issues the politicians are investigating in a hearing on corporate price gouging in the US. Never ones to let a crisis go to waste, fossil fuel companies and some political leaders are clamoring to build more import and export LNG projects, turning a blind eye to the inherent dangers posed by the industry. While this might be good for fossil fuel company profits, the rest of us

will suffer from the expansion of this industry.

Click here to enlarge picture.

Food & Water Action Europe looked at data from Gas LNG Europe for all EU large scale LNG terminals to assess to what extent these facilities have been using the available capacity between January 2021 and mid-January 2022. We also compared this with the utilization rates for September 2021 until mid-January, when the energy price crisis really hit. What we found is significant oversupply in import capacity with a few facilities importing near their maximum capacity.

European LNG terminals by the Numbers

Although LNG terminals have been used more over the past decade, the utilization rate of all EU terminals from January 2021 through mid-January 2022 is around 40%, trending downward from  46% in 2019 and 2020. The latest EU gas market analysis confirms the trend is continuing, with LNG imports decreasing by 9% in the third quarter of 2021, compared to the same period in 2020.

LNG has been hailed for years as a super flexible, competitive fuel, but in reality, it provides flexibility to fossil fuel companies and leaves the rest of us at the mercy of international commodity markets.  Last October, higher prices in Asia – over 500% in some cases — made it more profitable to divert shipments of LNG to those markets.

Most of the LNG Europe imports comes from the U.S. – in the first three quarters in 2021, the U.S. was the #1 supplier of the liquefied fuel. Europeans who oppose fracking have expressed intense opposition to these developments, since most of the U.S. gas is produced by using the extremely harmful extraction method of hydraulic fracturing.

Busy LNG terminals Vs Idling LNG terminals  

While most of us lose from LNG developments, the obvious ‘winner’ is Porto Levante LNG terminal in the Northeast of Italy, which operated at a 92% capacity last year and 87% since September. Conversely, the two other Italian LNG terminals showed below-average utilization rates over the same periods.

Bilbao LNG in Spain came in second, with a utilization rate of almost 85% in 2021 and of over 70% since September. Four out of the five other Spanish terminals were used at only 15-30% in 2021, increasing to 19-39% in the period from September onwards.

Spain and France are Europe’s biggest LNG importers, with 6 and 4 large scale LNG terminals respectively. The main LNG supplier for Spain in the third quarter of 2021 has been the U.S. followed by Nigeria and Qatar. For France, the top supplier was Nigeria, followed by Russia.

At the bottom of the LNG utilization list is Barcelona LNG in Spain, used at only about 15% in 2021 and 19% since September. Italy’s Panigaglia LNG terminal was used at about a quarter of its capacities in 2021 and even less, at only at 8%, since September. Building new LNG capacity is hardly necessary given the significant LNG capacity underutilization and the fact we need to be ramping down not ramping up fossil fuel infrastructure.

LNG Hungry Countries

We also found that LNG utilizations rates vary by country as well, with Eastern European Countries having higher top level utilization rates. In terms of the country-level, top utilization rates can be found in Poland. Almost 68% of the capacity of the state’s Swinoujscie terminal was used in 2021, and over 62% since September, mostly originating from Qatar. Rather than working to transition off this dirty fuel with so many problems, Poland is expanding LNG import capacity.

Croatia has a similar story, with the second biggest appetite for LNG compared to import capacity. Croatia’s highly contested Krk LNG terminal, which started operating in 2021, raises the country’s LNG utilization rate to above 60% for 2021 and over 70% since September, with gas coming mostly from Qatar and from the U.S.

Over the past few years, Gate Terminal, the only LNG terminal in the Netherlands, has ramped up its utilization rate. It stood at over 50% during the past year, and at over 60% from September onwards.

The country with the lowest utilization rate in the EU was Belgium, with its Zeebrugge LNG terminal working at only 23% of its capacity last year and 20% since September.

Between January 2021 and mid-January 2022, only the UK’s terminals were used less than that, at barely 22%.

LNG: Fossil Fuel False Hopes

The European experience shows dependence on LNG enables and exacerbates the current energy supply shortages. It is being built to accommodate gas from the fracking fields in the United States, which are causing considerable environmental and public health concerns, not to mention accelerate the climate crisis. The good news is, we have alternatives to this fossil fuel industry scheme to continue Europe’s dependance on gas. 

We can tackle both the climate crisis and prevent energy poverty by rejecting new LNG infrastructure and moving to truly clean renewable energy and heating solutions, including electrification, and energy efficiency. In the coming weeks, EU decision-makers consider the plans for prioritizing energy infrastructure in the next round of the Projects of Common interest. They can make critical decisions necessary to make Europe transition off dirty polluting LNG.

You can find detailed numbers on each EU large-scale LNG terminal here.

US and EU Methane Rules: Many Words, Few Deeds. A Transatlantic Perspective

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Fossil Fuels

A once ignored greenhouse gas (GHG), methane is now moving to the top of the international agenda. The EU and US have both announced decisions to adopt rules to cut methane emissions to bring them in line with international commitments they both have signed up, i.e. the EU-US driven Global Methane Pledge. 

Gastivists action at Vilvoorde gas power station

Only controlling methane emissions, however, does nothing to address the sources of methane emissions, fossil fuel extraction and industrial agriculture. The only real solution is to rapidly phase-out fossil fuels and factory farming, and this must be part of any plan to deal with methane! While many European countries have taken action to ban fracking, we are still supporting fracking by building gas import facilities, pipelines and petrochemical facilities that will create new markets for fracked gas originating in the United States, Russia and elsewhere.   

What are the EU and US initiatives focusing on? 

In short, the EU and US are focusing on hardening their existing methane infrastructure, poised to make significant investments in infrastructure that will support more fracking. The EU, as a major fossil fuels consumer, imports more than half the energy it consumes from third-party nations and it is directly responsible for the upstream methane emissions in exporting countries. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States is one of the top three oil and natural gas producers in the world, and is the second largest emitter of methane in the world, behind Russia. By building more methane infrastructure, we are not only making more leaky infrastructure, but also exacerbating the impacts fracking, transporting, refining and burning methane has on drinking water and air quality, while it continues to spew planet-warming GHGs into the atmosphere.

On December 15, the European Commission published a methane regulation aiming to reduce methane emissions in the energy sector. The proposal includes new rules for oil and gas companies on monitoring, reporting and verification, leak detection and repair and a ban on routine venting and flaring practices. 

In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing regulations to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas drilling operations. The new rules would apply to existing and new oil and gas infrastructure. They will focus on new emissions monitoring programs to detect and fix leaks and restrict venting practices.

Ramping Up the Transatlantic Fossil Fuel Pipeline

Both EU and US initiatives have a high degree of hypocrisy. Massive public subsidies on both sides of the Atlantic are propping up mega gas projects, while public land is being leased to support even more fossil fuel extraction. More specifically, the EU is planning to invest €13 billion of public funds in 20 fossil gas mega projects and President Biden just signed an infrastructure bill that provides over $25 billion in new subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, on top of $121 billion in existing US fossil fuel subsidies. The Biden’s Administration recently leased-out more than 800 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for fossil gas and oil extraction, the largest off-shore sale in US history.

The US is number one in LNG sales to the EU this year. Even though the supply chain on EU territory is only a small fraction of the fossil fuels consumed in Europe, the proposed methane measures does not consider halting exports overseas (in the US) or imports from overseas (in the EU). They do not impose any monitoring or fixing of leaks occurring outside the EU, but only mild requirements for importers to provide information. On the contrary, new unprofitable (without public subsidies) and unnecessary LNG terminals are under construction in the EU to import fracked gas. 

The construction of an LNG terminal in Cyprus (Cyprus2EU), which the EU could finance through its inclusion on the 5th PCI list, will lock the island into a fossil gas future for decades. This goes hand in hand with reckless plans within EU member states. Just a few days ago the Dutch government granted a subsidy of more than €4 million to the LNG-Zero project, which includes the adoption of the dangerous and unproven Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. The project suggests that methane emission measures and CCS can lead to “clean” LNG, a claim that has no basis in reality and outright ignores the impacts that fossil fuels have on public health and the environment. 

The situation is not rosy either in the US, where e.g., New Fortress Energy is planning to construct an LNG export terminal in the New Jersey community of Gibbstown, and there are additional plans for new LNG export infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. The LNG would be transported from fracking fields by pipeline, rail cars and trucks, with the risk of accidents and leaks that could directly affect local communities. Methane rules can only reduce the adverse impacts from fossil fuels in a limited way, and continue the greed driven desire to drill, transport and use fossil fuels altogether, and all the impacts that come with it. 

The support of EU leaders and the Biden Administration for propping up methane infrastructure does not end there. The promotion of hydrogen as a silver bullet for our climate crisis is little more than a fossil fuel industry plan to create even more markets for US fracked gas. The US Department of Energy is developing a plan to export massive amounts of methane based hydrogen and the EU presented a Hydrogen Strategy to build the infrastructure to accommodate this new trans Atlantic fossil fuel frenzy.  This risks big costs and fails to have any climate benefit, as so-called “blue” hydrogen from fossil gas is worse for the climate than just burning fossil gas straight away, or even coal for that matter. The end result is fossil-based hydrogen becomes a major driver of methane emissions, while the fossil fuel industry gets rich on public subsidies, communities are destroyed and our planet burns. 

O Fossil Fuels Phase-Out, Where Art Thou?

In the EU, despite demands from the European Parliament and civil society, there is no fossil fuel phase-out plan or even a ban on imported fracked gas. The US lacks any meaningful plans as well, and instead continues perpetuating a fossil fuel industry narrative that turns a blind eye to the true impacts of fossil fuel development, while pretending that fossil fuels and factory farms are in some way part of a sustainable world. Our government leaders are not taking the climate crisis seriously, and the methane plans in the US and EU are case in point.

We are never going to plug all the leaks, especially as we build out more fossil fuel infrastructure, encourage more drilling and fracking, and pretend like subsidies for fossil fuel industry scams like hydrogen and carbon capture are part of the climate solution. Only focussing on methane emissions also gravely lacks a larger vision of the devastating effects of oil and gas drilling and transport, such as the release of toxic substances, the problem with drilling waste and wastewater, the pollution of our air, water and the environment, severely harming local communities, the health of people and of our planet.

 

Picture: Gastivists Collective and Tegengas-Degaze action at Vilvoorde gas power station

COP and Climate Justice: A Story of Three Nightclubs

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Climate

Food & Water Action Europe’s Philip Wheeler was present in Glasgow in his role as our Network Developer. He has attended COP meetings before this one, and here he reflects on the progress of the movement, as measured in nightclubs he witnessed around the talks.

Nightclub 1
Paris, 2015

A crowd of diplomats are out in high spirits – high on their own success. They’re mostly drunk and chanting:
‘We. Just. Saved The World. We Just Saved The World.’
Footage of this chanting on the night of the deal over the Paris Agreement exists, though they would prefer you didn’t see it.
These people are what you might call the institutional believers, those for whom the international negotiations are the means by which we will make progress towards justice. For them, the backroom deals and geopolitical maneuvers are the paths we must take. Their chanting that night in Paris speaks for itself.

Nightclub 2
Paris, 2015

A bunch of confused activists are sitting in a squat that same night. They are exhausted, and looking for reasons for hope.
There’s no chanting here.
The flipside of the Paris aftermath is not on video, but in this party venue the mood is grim: the realisation is landing that that treaty is not binding – that the destruction of our home would not only continue, but accelerate under cover of this so-called Paris deal.
This crowd of organisers knows that, as the famous saying goes, power concedes nothing without a demand. The fossil fuel industry has our society in a stranglehold. They know on this night that we will need to keep building political power until the point where the institutions cannot resist us. A step-change in climate activism is required. Conversations about those next steps are underway.

Nightclub 3
Glasgow, 2021

Civil society is crammed into one of Glasgow’s finest Friday night establishments, where questionable dj-ing meets questionable dancing.
Rude things are shouted about the authorities by most everyone present – activists and locals.
The final outcome of the Glasgow negotiations hasn’t been decided yet; the final text will be dropped on us the next day. But in this club nobody is waiting for those irrelevant words.
The seeds of resistance, some planted after the disappointment of Paris, others so many generations before then, have started to germinate. We know the odds are still heavily against us. Many are hurting. But the numbers of those standing up for climate justice are growing, and we know more of the world is recognising the massive institutional greenwashing. Empty promises won’t slow us down. We know the destruction will continue until we are strong enough to stop it. But we are getting stronger. Climate justice is on the rise.

Spanish Climate Law: Another Nail in the Coffin for Fracking in Europe

Categories

Fossil Fuels

Spanish Climate Law: Another Nail in the Coffin for Fracking in Europe

By David Sánchez and Frida Kieninger

Fracking is not finding a home in Europe. The latest country to reject this dangerous fossil fuel drilling technique is Spain. The new law on Climate Change and Energy Transition, approved by the Spanish Congress and the Senate in late April, is set to get the final green light from the Congress soon. This legislation includes a ban on fracking and guarantees that no new hydrocarbon extraction projects will be authorized.

The ban on fracking is a clear victory for the Spanish movements, and marks a new landmark victory at the European level. The ban is part of a new Climate Change and Energy Transition law, which has some flaws; it lacks clear ambition and includes proposals aligned with fossil gas industry demands, which is why it has been criticised by Spanish environmental organisations like Amigos de la Tierra or Ecologistas en Acción.

Nonetheless, with this fracking ban Spain joins countries like Scotland, Germany, France and Bulgaria, as well as several other European regions that have banned this technique. Ireland has also imposed a ban on fracking, and is moving ahead with a ban on imported fracked gas.

That move is key. The EU is still the world’s biggest gas importer and it is still building and planning expensive and unnecessary gas infrastructure. While these fracking bans should serve as a model to follow across the Atlantic, the struggle to end the fossil fuels era continues in Europe.

Spain needs to ban imports of fracked gas

Within the EU, Spain is the country with the highest number of import terminals to import liquefied fossil gas (LNG), and it also uses them to import more fracked gas: In 2020, over a quarter of all US LNG that entered Europe, was supplied to Spain.

This needs to stop. With allies all across Europe and beyond, Food & Water Action Europe demanded a ban on fracked gas imports due to high methane emissions.

Stopping fossil gas means banning fracking, but also stopping it from entering through the back door. While the reputation of gas, particularly fracked gas, has suffered greatly thanks to the work of climate organizations and grassroots groups all over Europe, the gas industry is pushing a new ‘hydrogen hype’ to greenwash this fossil fuel and keep Europe hooked on fossil gas and costly pipelines or terminals.

The fracking ban in Spain is a reason to celebrate, but we’ve still got a lot to fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground!

EU LNG Terminals in Figures: Import Capacities Still Underutilized

Categories

Fossil Fuels

Just like in past years, Food & Water Action Europe has taken a closer look at the utilization rates of terminals to import liquefied fossil gas (LNG) in the EU and the UK.

With 2019 being a veritable boom year for LNG imports, the average utilization rate is up, but still nowhere near full capacity. While the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors have made it more difficult to estimate future trends, it is clear that the EU still has plans to expand import capacities. This would be a terrible decision, since there is clearly no justification to waste even more money on unneeded fossil fuel infrastructure.

Since 2012, EU & UK have imported approximately 555 billion cubic meters of dirty LNG* via 22 large-scale LNG terminals. On average, these facilities were used at less than one third (29%) of their full capacity. Yet, due to several geopolitical and market reasons, the EU and UK substantially increased their LNG imports in 2019 and 2020, reaching an average utilisation rate of 46%.

Read more details in our blog Europe’s Liquid Fossil Gas Dream: Costly, Inefficient and Harmful.

The amount of unused capacity varies from country to country. Looking at the past few years, both Portugal and Italy, followed by Poland, show the least idle capacity, while the UK, Greece, Spain and Belgium seem to be champions of almost-empty LNG terminals (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows that almost all EU & UK terminals imported significantly more LNG in the past 2 years than they had imported on average since 2012. Close to 40% (37,5%) of the total amount of LNG imported since 2012 was delivered in these two years (2019 and 2020). Nevertheless, even during the boom years, the average utilization of a majority of the terminals remained at less than 50%. Also, within countries with several import terminals (e.g. Spain, France, UK, Italy), utilization rates of respective LNG terminals can vary greatly.

Figure 2

While 10 countries in the EU27+UK import LNG, just three of them (Spain (25%), France (21%) and the UK (18%)) account for nearly two thirds (64%) of all LNG entering the bloc, followed by Italy (14%), Portugal and Poland (both 5%) and Belgium and the Netherlands (both 4%).

Germany, the EU’s #1 fossil gas consumer, however, has no LNG terminals and is thus not included in the calculation.

Figure 3

Since 2017, more and more of this LNG is actually coming from the United States, and a majority of the latter is fracked. In its gas market report, the EU Commission calculated the cumulative monthly LNG imports from the US that entered the EU – see Figure 4. Spain is the sad number one, with volumes of cumulative dirty US LNG imports higher than any other EU member state, followed by France, Italy and the Netherlands.

Also the UK became one of the most important takers of dirty US LNG in the past years.

Figure 4 – Cumulative monthly LNG imports from the US in the EU

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* Corresponding to the ~5423317 GWh of aggregated gas flow sent out of the LNG facilities. When we talk about LNG imports in this article, we do not include LNG storage. All calculations are based on figures from alsi.gie.eu (last update: 07/12/2020).

 

Europe’s Liquid Fossil Gas Dream: Costly, Inefficient and Harmful

The EU, the world’s biggest fossil gas importer, is bringing in a large amount of the dirty fuel in its liquid form – better known as LNG, or liquefied natural gas.LNG is fossil gas that has been cooled down to -162°C, so that it can be shipped across the world to then be turned back into its gaseous form. LNG is harmful for our climate and environment. Methane leaks all along the gas supply chain, and the process of cooling and shipping the fuel require a lot of energy and is also very polluting.

The EU and UK count 23 operating large-scale LNG terminals* which have been largely underused: between January 2012 and December 2020, EU and UK LNG terminals have been operating at only 29% of their full capacity**. But there are plans to expand LNG import and storage capacity, and in the last two years, the EU and UK have considerably increased their LNG imports.

A significant drop of LNG prices, caused by shrinking Asian demand and the alignment of European prices with East-Asian ones, made the EU a competitive destination for the polluting liquefied fuel. The average LNG terminals utilisation rates rose to 47% in 2019 and reached 51% during the first half of 2020, before falling again to 40%, partly due to COVID-19 lockdown measures.

The EU is also a champion in LNG re-exporting, meaning it imports LNG from the US or elsewhere and then re-exports it to Asia, which leads to even more inefficiencies with energy wasted in transport. In 2019, France was re-exporting more LNG than any other country, and the Netherlands and Belgium came in 3rd and 4th position respectively.

LNG is Costly

In 2019, the cost of LNG imports in the EU amounted to €16,2 billion. Instead of importing climate-hostile energy via polluting ships from the other side of the word, this money could have been invested in renovation programmes or local renewable energy infrastructure.

LNG is Inefficient

Given the EU’s enthusiasm for LNG, it is appropriate to ask how increasing these imports would be compatible with the EU’s commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. Indeed, to respect that commitment, the European Commission estimates that the EU will have to reduce gas imports by 13-19% by 2030 compared to 2015. Yet the same Commission supports the build-out of gas infrastructure; Its priority project list (the PCI list) still contains 5 LNG import projects. Given that the existing LNG terminals are largely underused, and the need to reduce our LNG imports in the next 10 years, going forward on any of these projects would be highly irresponsible.

One of the declared aims of the EU Commission is to reduce the EU’s dependence on Russian gas. But while LNG terminals are hailed as enablers of this independence, the share of Russian LNG imported to Europe has actually grown more than LNG from most other destinations in the last two years;  Russia is among the top 3 countries exporting LNG to Europe.

LNG is Harmful

In addition to the pollution created by LNG production and transport, the EU is increasingly supporting fracked gas production through growing LNG imports from the US. Particularly since mid-2018, the US is expanding its LNG exports linked to fracking, a brutal, water-intensive gas extraction method that creates earthquakes, leads to considerable methane emissions and the release of chemicals into the air and water, putting the environment and affected communities at risk. Fracking has outraged people across the continent, and some European countries, like France, have banned fracking extractions and cancelled fracked gas imports. More countries and a full EU-wide ban on fracking and the import of fracked LNG need to follow.

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* With the 23rd terminal, Krk LNG, only starting to operate on 1 January 2021, numbers apply to 22 terminals only.

**Percentage of the average aggregated gas flow out of the LNG facility compared to the total send-out capacity. Calculations are based on figures from alsi.gie.eu (last update: 07/12/2020).