Switzerland-headquartered energy company MET Group has signed a long-term agreement with energy giant Shell for the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) sourced from the U.S. to its European customers.
MET Group reported it had entered into a ten-year free-on-board (FOB) LNG purchase agreement with Shell with the primary objective of supplying its European customers with U.S. LNG.
Tom Summers , Senior Vice President of Shell LNG Marketing and Trading, said: “LNG has a crucial role to play in delivering energy security and agreements such as this are instrumental in achieving that. We look forward to working with MET Group to fulfil their gas requirements and help to meet the needs of its diverse customer base.”
Through the long-term contract, MET Group said it was able to further diversify its LNG supply portfolio, helping to ensure security of supply for its customers across Europe, ranging from its own gas-fired power plant demand to energy-intensive industrial companies and SMEs and households.
This LNG supply is also said to enable the company’s diversification ambitions, allowing it to extend its geographical scope to new regions such as Asia.
MET has long-term regasification capacity bookings in Germany, Croatia and Spain, and has imported into eight different countries in recent years, including around the Mediterranean – Greece, Italy, Croatia, Spain, Northwest Europe – UK, Belgium, Germany, and the Nordic region – Finland.
“The long-term FOB source fits perfectly into MET’s LNG strategy. We have a diverse European downstream position building on a regasification capacity portfolio around Europe, optimizing our downstream requirements with flexible supply sources,” said György Vargha , CEO of MET International.
“As a natural next step, we have entered a long-term FOB position enabling diversification to the global LNG markets.”