Advanced talks between Germany and Oman regarding liquefied gas supplies
Three informed sources told Reuters that Germany and the Sultanate of Oman are in an advanced stage of talks about signing a long-term agreement on liquefied gas supplies that extends for at least ten years, as Berlin continues to search for alternatives to Russian fuel supplies.
Europe has been striving to find an alternative to Russian gas since last year, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, after the Russian state company Gazprom began to reduce supplies through pipelines to Europe before stopping them.
RWE Energy in September concluded a liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal with the UAE’s ADNOC, and Germany is looking for other suppliers through utility companies Uniper and Seeve, which were nationalized by Berlin last year.
Two informed sources said that the agreement with the Sultanate of Oman will be for between half a million and one million tons annually, and one of them said that it will be for the supply of 0.8 million tons annually over ten years.
A third informed source said there was discussion about a 10-year deal.
Two sources said Uniper was involved in the talks. One of them said that the company is already in talks with the Sultanate of Oman about an ammonia agreement after the group signed an agreement with the Omani hydrogen project Heport Duqm in 2021, under which it is discussing an agreement to obtain the project’s future production of green ammonia.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, hopes to find an alternative to energy imports from Russia by mid-2024, a major effort for a country that relies heavily on natural gas to power its industrial sector.
In November, Qatar Energy and ConocoPhillips signed two sales and purchase agreements to export two million tons of LNG annually to Germany for at least 15 years, starting from 2026.
Although the agreements with Qatar will be positive for Germany, they will not provide an immediate solution to the energy crisis plaguing Berlin.
(Reuters).