Euan: I don't think Jonathan's post was "rubbish" at all, and I think it's the kind of comment that should be discussed, rather than just dismissed. You can disagree with his Jonathan's contention that France, Spain, and Italy will be "forced" into a cozy relationship with Algeria, and he did overstate the current state of North Sea gas decline, but I don't think his overarching argument is off the mark--after all, North Sea gas will decline in the not-too-distant future. Natural Gas is less globally fungible due to infrastructure issues, as you know, than oil and the diversified nature of a nation's gas supply doesn't make a geographically proximate supplier unimportant. I think Jonathan's point is actually well taken, that a disruption to Algerian natural gas supplies would be highly significant to France, Italy, and Spain. Additionally, despite France's diversified supply, disruption to pipelines serving Spain or Italy would impact France because gas is highly fungible among neighbors that share significant pipeline infrastructure--Spain and Italy would bid up lost Algerian gas in an effort to maintain supply, and France (and other parts of Europe) would feel the impact. To my knowledge, existing LNG trains and associated infrastructure (esp. tankers and port infrastructure) are insufficient to make up lost pipeline supply by merely transferring to LNG. Likewise with disruption of LNG infrastructure--it can't be merely diverted to waiting pipelines...

Euan,

Point taken to do a little more homework here at TOD before posting.

Had I read your in-depth article on The European Gas Market I would not have made those off-the-cuff comments based on a single graphic.

This points out the problem with artificially grouping nations together without having a very good reason for doing so. Algeria, Spain, France & Italy do not constitute anything approaching a closed system as the graphic implies and I'll need to review the various groupings I have set up in the databrowser. (Groupings were one of the main requests from the initial batch of users.)

I should probably stick to groupings that are either geologic in nature like the North Sea or political in nature like the EU or OECD.

-- Jon