Europe Saves $8bn in Gas Bill Last Year – IEA

Europe has made savings of $8 billion on its natural gas bill last year because surging US shale production and a shake-up in EU energy markets forced Russia to change its gas pricing mechanism, said a top official of International Energy Agency (IEA).

The year 2018 was a "golden year" for natural gas which accounted for 45 per cent of total global energy growth, which in turn was the fastest in two decades," remarked IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, while releasing the annual gas report.

He said the shift in global gas markets stemming from the US shale gas revolution, a rapid expansion of the liquefied natural gas industry and EU liberalization of energy markets, had forced Russia to change its oil-indexed pricing of gas.

The change began, he said, when rising US gas output led Qatar, the world’s largest LNG exporter, to divert LNG supplies to Europe, shaking up pricing on the continent and widening the influence of the Dutch TTF benchmark price.