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50 Years of LNG

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50 Years of LNG

50 Years of LNG

On October 12, 1964, the first commercial shipment of liquified natural gas (LNG) was made between Algeria and Canvey Island in the United Kingdom. From the time of this very first LNG export, there are now 29 countries importing LNG. The amount of vessels carrying LNG at sea has ballooned to 424 LNG carriers with another 127 on order.

Many countries have been more reliant on LNG importing in recent years. Since Fukushima, Japan has now changed its energy mix to rely on LNG for a massive 48% of its power generation. In addition, South Korea uses LNG to meet 25% of its electricity needs. Add in Taiwan, and these three countries import over half of all available supply.

While China was on pace to ramp up LNG imports even higher than its current rate, a recent $400 billion energy deal between Russia and China may help alleviate those needs to some degree.

New global LNG export projects are underway and countries including Canada, Australia, East Africa, and the United States are all looking to get a bigger foothold in the game. These new plays have enough potential to even eventually dethrone Qatar, the world leader since 2006, which recently achieved its production goal of producing 77 million metric tonnes of LNG per year.

Original graphic from: Wood Mackenzie

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How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the U.S.

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Voronoi graphic visualizing U.S. reliance on Russian uranium

How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium. The bill must pass the Senate before becoming law.

In this graphic, we visualize how much the U.S. relies on Russian uranium, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA).

U.S. Suppliers of Enriched Uranium

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported.

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the United States. In 2022, Russia supplied almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel America’s fleet of more than 90 commercial reactors.

Country of enrichment serviceSWU%
🇺🇸 United States3,87627.34%
🇷🇺 Russia3,40924.04%
🇩🇪 Germany1,76312.40%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom1,59311.23%
🇳🇱 Netherlands1,3039.20%
Other2,23215.79%
Total14,176100%

SWU stands for “Separative Work Unit” in the uranium industry. It is a measure of the amount of work required to separate isotopes of uranium during the enrichment process. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Most of the remaining uranium is imported from European countries, while another portion is produced by a British-Dutch-German consortium operating in the United States called Urenco.

Similarly, nearly a dozen countries around the world depend on Russia for more than half of their enriched uranium—and many of them are NATO-allied members and allies of Ukraine.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry paid over $800 million to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, and its fuel subsidiaries.

It is important to note that 19% of electricity in the U.S. is powered by nuclear plants.

The dependency on Russian fuels dates back to the 1990s when the United States turned away from its own enrichment capabilities in favor of using down-blended stocks of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium.

As part of the new uranium-ban bill, the Biden administration plans to allocate $2.2 billion for the expansion of uranium enrichment facilities in the United States.

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