Additional citations:
Exxon Mobil Should Skip a Vanishing LNG Market - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-06-17/exxon-... - June 17th, 2026
Why $70 Should Be the Most Worrying Number for LNG - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-05-11/why-70... - May 11th, 2026
> That’s the theory, at least. The problem is that those rising middle powers do have alternatives to meet their energy needs, thanks to the growth of renewables. Asia’s LNG-to-power market was already being aggressively undercut on price by solar, batteries and wind. The war in Iran has demonstrated that clean energy is more reliable, too. If Woodside’s main projects ever get built, they’ll find themselves trying to sell into a glutted market, which has lost all appetite for their product.
> Consider the numbers. A new gas-fired power plant in Asia needs to sell electricity for more than $100 per megawatt-hour to break even. Even existing plants, whose construction costs have long since been paid off, need $70/MWh or more if they’re fueled with LNG. Photovoltaic solar power, or PV, can be had for half the new-build price, at around $50/MWh or less. You can even add a battery and wind turbines and have round-the-clock clean electricity for less than what established gas plants are paying just for their fuel and maintenance.
> Have a look at recent announcements from utilities and generators, and you can watch bullish forecasts for Asia’s gas demand being shredded in real time. Just nine days after the start of the Iran war, a company that spent nearly a decade building a 650 megawatt LNG generator in the Philippines announced it was considering abandoning it. The gas turbines are now being sold to the US, where they’ll serve a data-center site in Indiana — not an ideal market for oceangoing LNG ships. A few weeks after that, Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup cancelled plans to build a 4.8 gigawatt LNG power plant which would have been one of the world’s biggest, vowing to replace it with solar, batteries and wind instead. Pakistan has been backing away from LNG for several years, driven by a boom in small-scale solar and surging prices for chilled gas after the 2022 Ukraine war. LNG deals in Bangladesh and South Africa have similarly been cancelled or delayed in recent months. India’s gas generation, meanwhile, has been in decline for nearly two decades.
> These days, gas can’t even make the argument that it’s a quick route to power. All those data centers being built in the US are outbidding Asian utilities in a tight market for gas turbines, meaning the only way to acquire generators is to wait longer, or pay yet more for them. Gas is “much riskier in execution compared to PV and wind,” Abdulhameed Al Muhaidib, Chief Financial Officer of Saudi Arabian power engineer ACWA Power Co., told investors last year.