26 April 2024
Emirates showdown: LNG faces nuclear in gas-hungry UAE
Publication date: 09 January 2017
Gas Strategies Group
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The United Arab Emirates is one of the world’s longest-standing LNG exporters. Although it has the seventh largest gas reserves in the world and a pipeline link to neighbouring Qatar’s huge resources, it has also been importing LNG since 2010, when the Jebel Ali terminal in Dubai started up. More recently, Abu Dhabi’s Ruwais terminal received its first cargoes in 2016. The UAE’s LNG imports are driven by the energy needs of a fast-growing and gas-dependent economy, especially in power generation. But with substantial gas resources of its own and the start-up this year of the country’s first nuclear power plant, the longer-term future of LNG imports is unclear. Also, with the ADGAS liquefaction plant’s only sales contract expiring in 2019, the future of the UAE’s LNG exports is similarly uncertain.