On Monday 1st May, the French company TotalEnergies signed an agreement worth one billion dollars, or €900,000,000, with the Emirati gas company ADNOC Gas. The agreement is valid for three years.
The Emirati gas company ADNOC Gas announced on Monday 1st May agreement of at least one billion dollars with the French company TotalEnergies to supply it with liquefied natural gas. European countries are seeking to diversify their suppliers in order to do without Russia. This agreement, valid for three years, weighs between 1 and 1.2 billion dollars (between 900 million and 1 billion euros), said in a press release ADNOC Gas, a subsidiary of the Emirati oil giant Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC ). The Emirati liquefied natural gas (LNG) “will be delivered to various export markets around the world”, added the company, which did not specify the volumes supplied. The agreement was signed with TotalEnergies Gas and its subsidiary Power Limited.
Liquefied natural gas as an alternative to Russian gas
In July 2022, an agreement between the French multinational and ADNOC was signed “to cooperate in the energy supply sector”, during a visit to Paris by the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The Emirates also announced in September to supply Germany with natural gas and diesel, as part of an agreement on “energy security”. European countries are increasingly relying on liquefied natural gas as an alternative to Russian gas, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The question is particularly delicate for Germany, half of whose gas imports come from Russia.
France, for its part, imported before the war in Ukraine – triggered in February 2022 by the Russian invasion – almost 17% of natural gas from Russia, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition. In 2021, the United Arab Emirates produced 57 billion cubic meters of natural gas, or about 1.4% of global production, according to figures from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. In the same year, according to the same source, the Emirates produced 8.8 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas or 1.7% of world exports. The country hopes to reach an annual production of 15 million tons in the next few years, according to the Bloomberg news agency.
