A more liquid market

摘要

Amid the waters of the Adriatic, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Venice, a curious new structure is being installed. It is the size of two football pitches, as tall as a ten-storey building and will soon be connected to the shore by a 15-kilometre pipeline. It is a regasification terminal, which will take deliveries of liquefied natural gas (lng) and turn it back into a gas before pumping it ashore-and it is the first such plant to be located at sea. That has allowed its owners, Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum, both oil and gas firms, and Edison, a local utility, to avoid the permitting problems that have hampered regasification projects in crowded countries such as Italy. Such innovations are helping the lng business to grow dramatically-but they are also changing it in unpredictable ways.