Gladstone FOB: Asia's New LNG Spot Price?

With an impending oversupply in the Pacific, the conditions are right for an LNG pricing point and hub to emerge in Asia. Multiple candidates are proposed and those positioning include Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai. But a suitable pricing point in the Pacific need not be a market, e.g. the established pricing point for coal in the region is a supply source, Newcastle FOB. Indeed Eastern Australia ticks a lot of the boxes cited by the IEA as key tenets of a potential gas trading hub. We foresee the potential for the creation of as much as 8 mmtpa of flexible LNG export capacity at Gladstone, linked to the domestic market in Eastern Australia. This LNG capacity could become a flexible source of LNG supply to the Pacific market, with investment in upstream drilling and tie-back development reacting to price signals in the Asian market. We explore the pros and cons of "Gladstone FOB".