Unlocking Eastern Europe’s LNG demand via shared regas terminals

LNG imports into Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that have regas capacity, i.e. Poland, Lithuania and Greece, have reached record highs, averaging altogether 55% utilisation in the first quarter of 2020 or 1.62Mt. As the global gas and LNG market is trying to deal with the most sever oversupply to date, could existing regas capacity in CEE unlock latent demand in neighbouring markets? Indeed, some LNG cargoes imported in the region included LNG purchased by neighbouring markets which do not have proprietary regas terminals, including Estonia, Ukraine and Bulgaria which imported LNG via Lithuania, Poland and Greece, respectively. And players in other markets in the region have also expressed interest in purchasing LNG in the future, including in Hungary which will be able to leverage the Krk LNG terminal in Croatia, due to be commissioned by January 2021.