Aurex Group attended the landmark event in the energy industry’s calendar, Gastech 2023, hosting the world’s largest meeting place for the gas, LNG, hydrogen, low-carbon solutions, and climate technologies industries. The four-day event hosted a record-breaking 40,000 attendees, including 4,000 delegates, and 750 exhibitors, from over 100 countries. Here are a few of our key takeaways from the event:

• LNG prices are lower but still high on a historical basis which has created some demand destruction, particularly in parts of Asia. Albeit, positive market sentiment is rebounding, and prices are much lower compared to 2023 which has restored a degree of comfort in the market, said Steve Hill, Executive Vice President of Shell Energy.
• The theme of trust was echoed by several industry leaders during the event. Honoring LNG contracts highlighted as underpinning security of supply and predictability of prices.
• LNG portfolio expansion and diversification are unanimously poised as the key agenda for the leading energy players.
• Shell is looking to increase its LNG volumes by 20% to 30% by the end of the decade, said Cederic Cremers, Executive Vice President of Shell’s LNG business. The company is considering plans for after its current slate of projects and investments — which include a facility in Canada — start through 2030, he said.
• Venture Global LNG announces a long-term expansion plan to increase production from 70 MTPA to more than 100 MTPA.
• By 2027, more than half of PCI’s long-term LNG supply will come from their own equity production. PCI will continue to focus on portfolio diversification and to continue to be agile and resilient, said Yaoyu Zhang, Global Head of LNG & New Energies at PetroChina International.
• On PCI’s strategy to expand their trading portfolio, Yaoyu said, emphasized how the importance of honoring contracts will benefit PCI and their customers in the long term, increasing efficiency for operational excellence and development automation and digitalization to make it easy for counterparts to do business, hedging and risk management key to manage business risks, more acquisitions into regasification capacity domestically and internationally to become a reliable supplier.
• ENI ambitions 18+ MTPA portfolio by 2026.
• Vitol sees 50 MTPA diverted to Europe in 2023.

In hiring news, we continue to observe sustained demand for LNG front office (physical trading, derivatives trading, marketing & origination) talent across both EMEA & APAC. Trade houses Glencore, Freepoint Commodities, and Gunvor have been particularly active over the past quarter, with Majors including BP and Chevron who have also been bolstering their respective LNG trading & origination teams. Interest for APAC Gas & LNG derivatives trading talent is continuing to grow as companies seek to better manage risk exposures, especially after the extreme volatility last year – a hiring trend we’ve observed primarily with trade houses including Vitol who recently hired Alissa Hew from Goldman Sachs. A key challenge we’ve observed trade houses experiencing relating to their LNG derivatives hiring processes is the general lack of talent insofar of ‘pure derivatives traders’ (adept in both hedging and prop) with a demonstrated trading track record, which coupled with the ‘brain drain’ of derivatives talent due to hedge fund hiring activity particularly amongst Balyasny,  Bluecrest, etc. – offering some of the most competitive financial premiums for traders – are leaving the trade houses with limited options. Subsequently, due to the scarcity of seasoned and proven Gas & LNG derivative talent options, we have advised leading trade houses, in certain cases, to re-adjust their high-barrier entry requirements to instead identify and cultivate the ‘up-and-coming’ talent options, which has proven to be successful.

If you are a client seeking to learn more about the above, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me – contact details below.

Sami Jacobs

Consultant

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+65 3165 0710

sami@aurexgroup.com

EA 18S9493 | R2092031