Although headlines on current tightness in the global natural gas market have mostly focused on Europe, Latin America has played a role in the crisis as well, according to Columbia University’s Luisa Palacios.

LNG

Palacios, a senior research scholar at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, spoke to NGI’s senior Mexico and Latin America editor Christopher Lenton for the latest episode of NGI’s Hub & Flow podcast.

Latin America experienced one of the strongest liquefied natural gas (LNG) demand surges in history last year, Palacios said, “and really it was a combination of factors that led to this.”

On the supply side, the region saw a more than 10% year/year decline in natural gas production in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. The region then saw a substantial...