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Asia LNG buyers set to meet this week on joint procurement
An uncomfortable prospect for global exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will unfold in India this week as buyers from countries that import 70 per cent of the world’s LNG will meet to discuss how to get a better deal. Economic expansion, nuclear plant shutdowns in Japan and South Korea and the shift toward cleaner-burning gas in smog-choked Chinese cities have contributed to rising demand for LNG in Asia, already the top destination for the fuel.
Demand has helped push LNG prices to near record levels. Trying to find ways to cut soaring gas import bills, industry participants from India, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan will meet in New Delhi on Dec. 5-6, said B.C. Tripathi, chairman of GAIL (India), India’s biggest gas pipeline operator. The meetings may herald the early stages of an Asian buyers’ club for natural gas in super cooled form transported on ships. Should such a grouping gain traction, a historical precedent would be the formation of the International Energy Agency, which was set up by western economies to counter OPEC after the first oil shock in the 1970s.
A buyers’ group could counter the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, a loose group of 13 gas-producing nations, including Algeria, Iran, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar and Russia.
“It has been observed in some recent deals that prices offered by the same seller to Europe and Asia vary greatly, beyond net back and business considerations,” said Indian Oil Minister S. Veerappa Moily.
“Large Asian buyers coming together may negotiate from a position of strength,” Moily said. Asian importers say they are charged an excessive premium to other regions because of the tradition of linking LNG contracts to oil prices. A free market in the fuel is constrained by contractual restrictions on ship destinations.
“This is a forum exclusively for buying countries so that we collectively have a voice in the international market,” Tripathi said, speaking at another gas conference that ends on Wednesday.
Tripathi said the meeting later this week was the second for buyers from the five countries that together accounted for nearly 70 percent of LNG shipments in 2012, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Spot LNG prices LNG-AS are currently at about $18.95 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) and are closing in on last winter’s peak of $19.67, hit on Feb. 18. They have risen over a third from this year’s low of $14.13 in May. In the United States, where surging shale gas production has pushed down prices, natural gas trades at about $3.80 per mmBtu GT-HH-IDX, but the price doesn’t account for the cost of cooling the fuel to liquid form and shipping it overseas.
Most LNG is bought on long-term contract and it is the cost of these supplies that Asian buyers are trying to reduce. They also want to delink contracts from oil prices and eliminate the clauses that restrict the destination of shipments and prevent them from selling on excess cargoes. Buyers tend to turn to the spot market as their demand fluctuates or contracted supplies are cut off due to maintenance or other outages at LNG facilities.
Asian buyers are betting on LNG shipments from the U.S., which has started relaxing restrictions on gas exports, to force prices down.
“Export of natural gas from America can act as a catalyst for change,” IEA head Maria van der Hoeven told the gas conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. Across the region, demand for LNG is rising, while new, uncontracted sources of supply aren’t likely until at least the end of the decade. In Japan, which buys about a third of global LNG shipments, all nuclear reactors have been shut down following the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011. While there may be a slight decline in imports this year, they are set to rise again over the next few years as more gas-fired capacity comes online.
In South Korea, a quarter of the nation’s nuclear reactors have been shut mostly due to a corruption scandal that started in 2012, pushing LNG imports 13 percent higher in the first 10 months of this year.
Potential shortages of piped gas in China have also pushed up demand for LNG there, while India’s need is to cut imported fuel costs as the rupee has plunged this year.
Indian and Japanese officials have been among the most vocal in the push to cut prices. At an LNG producers’ and consumers’ conference in Tokyo in September, the two countries announced they would study joint purchases of the fuel. So far they’ve been rebuffed by LNG producers, who argue long-term contracts ensure the reliability of supplies in a high risk business.
“Every utility has its own requirements for LNG and how do you share the risks associated with taking on that length of contract?” said one LNG trade source. “Nobody’s ever approached us (as a consortium). As far as I know, it’s all ideas at the moment.”
Among regional buyers not many said they were sending representatives to the meeting. Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co said it was sending India-based representatives to the meeting.
Tokyo Electric Power Co and Tokyo Gas Co, two of Japan’s biggest LNG buyers, said they weren’t sending representatives to New Delhi.
“Among buyers, there have been talks to make efforts to narrow the price gaps (between regions) and reduce premiums,” said a source at Korea Gas Corp. “However, as there have been no concrete steps yet, we haven’t participated in the talks nor suggested ideas.”
The formation of a buyers’ forum, if it occurs at all, will take time, said one Chinese buyer.
“Maybe slowly there will be some sort of cooperation but so far we haven’t seen any material working together,” said an LNG procurement official at China’s Sinopec .
(Reuters) –
A new technology transfer agreement between the Nigeria–China Strategic Partnership (NCSP) and the Presidential Implementation Committee on Technology Transfer (PICTT) is expected to open more job opportunities, improve local skills, and expand access to advanced technology for ordinary Nigerians.
In a press statement reaching Vanguard on Friday, the MoU aims to strengthen industrial development, support local content, and create clearer pathways for Nigerians to benefit from China’s growing investments in the country.
PICTT Chairman, Dr Dahiru Mohammed, said the partnership will immediately begin coordinated programmes that support local participation in infrastructure and industrial projects.
Special Adviser to the President on Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr John Uwajumogu, said the deal will help attract high value investments that can stimulate job creation and strengthen Nigeria’s economy.
NCSP Head of International Relations, Ms Judy Melifonwu, highlighted that Nigerians stand to gain from expanded STEM scholarships, technical training, access to modern technology, and collaboration across key sectors including steel, agriculture, automobile parks, and cultural industries.
The NCSP Director-General reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to measurable results, noting that the partnership with PICTT will prioritise initiatives that deliver direct national impact.
The MoU signals a new phase of Nigeria–China cooperation focused on practical delivery, local content, and opportunities that improve everyday livelihoods.
EU regulators launched an antitrust investigation into Meta Platforms on Thursday over its rollout of artificial intelligence features in its WhatsApp messenger that would block rivals, hardening Europe’s already tough stance on Big Tech. The move, reported earlier by Reuters and the Financial Times, is the latest action by European Union regulators against large technology firms such as Amazon and Alphabet’s Google as the bloc seeks to balance support for the sector with efforts to curb its expanding influence.
Europe’s tough stance – a marked contrast to more lenient U.S. regulation – has sparked an industry pushback, particularly by U.S. tech titans, and led to criticism from the administration of U. S. President Donald Trump. The European Commission said that the investigation will look into Meta’s new policy that would limit other AI providers’ access to WhatsApp, a potential boost for its own Meta AI system integrated into the platform earlier this year.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said the move was to prevent dominant firms from “abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors”. She added interim measures could be imposed to block Meta’s new WhatsApp AI policy rollout. “AI markets are booming in Europe and beyond,” she said. This is why we are investigating if Meta’s new policy might be illegal under competition rules, and whether we should act quickly to prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space.”
A WhatsApp spokesperson called the claims “baseless”, adding that the emergence of chatbots on its platforms had put a “strain on our systems that they were not designed to support”, a reference to AI systems from other providers. “Still, the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems.” The EU was the first in the world to establish a comprehensive legal framework for AI, setting out guardrails for AI systems and rules for certain high-risk applications in the AI Act.
Meta AI, a chatbot and virtual assistant, has been built into WhatsApp’s interface across European markets since March. The Commission said a new policy fully applicable from January 15, 2026, may block competing AI providers from reaching customers via the platform. Ribera said the probe came on the back of complaints from small AI developers about the WhatsApp policy. The Interaction Company of California, which has developed AI assistant Poke.com, has taken its grievance to the EU competition enforcer. Spanish AI startup Luzia has also talked to the Commission, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Marvin von Hagen, co-founder and CEO of The Interaction Company of California, said if Meta was allowed to roll out its new policy, “millions of European consumers will be deprived of the possibility of enjoying new and innovative AI assistants”. Meta also risks a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of breaching EU antitrust rules.
Italy’s antitrust watchdog opened a parallel investigation in July into allegations that Meta leveraged its market power by integrating an AI tool into WhatsApp, expanding the probe in November to examine whether Meta further abused its dominance by blocking rival AI chatbots from the messaging platform. The antitrust probe is a more traditional means of investigation than the EU’s Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s landmark legislation currently used to scrutinize Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud services for potential curbs. Reuters
The spouses and children of billionaires inherited more wealth in 2025 than in any previous year since reporting began in 2015, according to UBS’s Billionaire Ambitions Report published on Thursday. In the 12 months to April, 91 people became billionaires through inheritance, collectively receiving $298 billion, up more than a third from 2024, the Swiss bank said. “These heirs are proof of a multi-year wealth transfer that’s intensifying,” UBS executive Benjamin Cavalli said.
The report is based on a survey of some of UBS’s super-rich clients and a database that tracks the wealth of billionaires across 47 markets in all world regions. At least $5.9 trillion will be inherited by billionaire children over the next 15 years, the bank calculates.
Most of this inheritance growth is set to take place in the United States, with India, France, Germany and Switzerland next on the list, UBS estimated. However, billionaires are highly mobile, especially younger ones, which could change that picture, it added. The search for a better quality of life, geopolitical concerns and tax considerations are driving decisions to relocate, according to the report.
In Switzerland, where $206 billion will be inherited over the next 15 years according to the bank, voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected 50 per cent tax on inherited fortunes of $62 million or more, after critics said it could trigger an exodus of wealthy people.
Switzerland, the UAE, the U.S. and Singapore are among billionaires’ preferred destinations, UBS’s Cavalli said. “In Switzerland, Sunday’s vote may have helped to increase the country’s appeal again,” he said. Reuters
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