ICIS View: Repsol’s return to the global LNG market

MADRID (ICIS)–While other companies have exited the LNG business in recent years to focus on the development of renewable energy markets, Spain’s oil and gas major Repsol is re-establishing itself on the global LNG market.

It has been almost a decade since Repsol sold its LNG assets in 2013 to Anglo-Dutch portfolio trader Shell in order to reduce its debt following the expropriation of the company’s shares in Argentina’s YPF by the country’s government a year earlier.

This meant Shell took Repsol’s LNG supply from Trinidad & Tobago and Peru.
All that Repsol was left with was its majority ownership of Canada’s Canaport import terminal.

Repsol did, however, sign a new term offtake contract in 2013, and another in 2016, the first with Naturgy and the second with Mitsubishi for supply to Canaport or into Spain.

In 2018, Repsol signed another long-term deal, with US Venture Global for 1mtpa, starting from 2022, from the future Calcasieu Pass plant in Louisiana.

Repsol also began to increase its activity on the spot LNG market last year.

The company delivered its first ever spot cargoes to the UK and Lithuania.

Most recently, Repsol signed a 15-year supply contract with Novatek from the Russian producer’s planned Arctic LNG 2 plant, starting from 2024, for 1mtpa of LNG.

This will see Repsol’s contracted LNG portfolio reaching 3.75mtpa from 2024, according to LNG Edge.

Fellow Spanish energy company Iberdrola and Denmark’s Orsted, for example, have divested their LNG assets in recent years with a shifting focus towards renewables.

Repsol has gradually expanded its LNG portfolio, while also beginning to make significant investments in green energy projects.