2026年更新：冲突后欧洲的液化天然气和天然气发展：2026年是新的2022年吗？

Is 2026 the New 2022?Europe – April 2026 The role of liquified natural gas (LNG) in Europehas evolved significantly in the last five years,with every indication that the ship-transported Today Russian gas makes up a small fraction of the Europeangas supply. But the European gas portfolio is still notparticularly diversified; now the US, once a net gas importer,is the largest source of gas supply to Europe. With theswitch from Russian pipeline gas to US LNG, Europe findsitself working under a different contractual framework and This article reflects on the changed role of LNG inEurope over the last several years and addresses certainof its ongoing challenges, including those arising in lightof the 2022 Russian cuts to pipeline gas and the latestdevelopments in the Middle East. For those European buyers The cuts to Russian gas, as set out below, caused asignificant uptick in opportunistic trading behavior amongmarket participants. Companies decided not to delivercargoes and pay liquidated damages. Companies decidedto extract contractual flexibility from provisions previously Natural gas has long been a critical source of fuel in Europe.The Groningen gas field in the Netherlands was discoveredin 1959, and quickly became, at that time, the world’s largestgas field.1In 1968, Gazprom’s predecessor Soyuzneftexportand Austrian OMV signed the first gas supply agreementbetween the Soviet Union and western Europe, and Russianpipeline gas began flowing to Austria just a few monthslater.2West Germany and East Germany followed shortlythereafter. The events of the 1970s, including the 1973 While only time will tell, it is the view of the authors that thisis likely not the case. 2022 taught market participants someharsh, but critical lessons about the kinds of contractualprotections that need to be provided for in new contracting. Further, the suppliers declaringforce majeureare not reallycomparable to Gazprom, and are not similarly situated from a Decline of Russian Pipeline Gas –June 2022 Supply Cut andForce MajeureArbitrations Over the next 50 years, Russian gas came to dominate theEuropean energy mix. With insufficient domestic productionto meet its demand, Europe was heavily reliant on importedgas, importing 90% of the gas it consumed, 45% of whichcame from Russia.5Within the last decade, Gazprom wasexporting Russian pipeline gas to Germany, Austria, Slovakia,Hungary, Turkey, Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, France,Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Poland, For those in the gas industry, it often seems that historicalevents rotate on a generational cycle and the more thingschange, the more they remain the same. As noted above,a significant reason why Europe ultimately came to relyso heavily on Russian gas was due to the events of the The Versailles Court of Appeal, asked to enforce a Germancourt order allowing seizing of Engie’s claims, rejected it,finding that the German court had not complied with the The 1970s energy crisis caused high price spikes, supplyinsecurity and a desire to diversify supply sources. 50 yearslater, the events of 2022 showed that similar structural issuesunderpinned the “modern” European gas market. Followingthe February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia cut its pipeline gas supply to Europe, claimingforce majeureasa result of alleged technical problems on the Nord Stream 1 The upshot of this is that many gas buyers were burned bytheir supplier and struggled to enforce their contractual rightsin an international legal system that relies on parties acting Third, as a result of Gazprom’s underdeliveries,force majeurearbitrations quickly proliferated throughout the industry, Publicly available information indicates that all of the tribunalshearing the Gazprom underdelivery arbitrations unanimouslyfound that there was noforce majeure.7These developments under multiple different substantive legal systems, dependingon what the governing law of the relevant contract was. Thisreflected both an increase in the exercise of the legal system, First, the general public became sharply aware that fuelis actually a precarious commodity. Used to the easy andplentiful flow of Russian gas, it became immediately apparentthat with supply source geographically distant from the pointof consumption, gas underdeliveries were causing gas and In addition to the more than half a dozenforce majeure arbitrations against Gazprom, otherforce majeuredisputes also quickly came to the fore. The impact of the cuts inRussian gas was not limited to specific European buyers whohad contracted with Gazprom. Rather, short-term spot priceshit unseen heights and various market participants sought tooptimize their results on the back of those prices, giving rise to Second,a significant number of gas-related arbitrations proliferated. Numerous European buyers have now obtainedarbitration awards, but it is not clear where they can beenforced. Most of the awards are against the entity Gazprom