A first ship with liquid gas from Western Australia has moored in Europe's largest port, Rotterdam.

The Woodside Energy group from Perth had sent the Woodside Rees Withers on the approximately 11,000 nautical mile journey from the Northwest Shelf off the coast of the mineral wealth country to northern Europe.

The customer is the state-supported Uniper.

The tanker has around 75,000 tons of liquid gas on board.

Christopher Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.

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Australia is trying to win over Europe as another major buyer of energy.

In the foreground is the hope for the future delivery of green or blue hydrogen.

With the delivery of liquid gas, Australia is trying to demonstrate its close partnership with Europe, but also its ability to deliver reliably in times of crisis.

“The events of 2022 have shown that the world cannot take reliable and affordable energy for granted, especially as we strive to decarbonise,” said Woodside trade chief for Northern and Central Europe Mark Abbotsford.

It had taken the ship a month to cover the route to Rotterdam.

Since there is still no gas supply chain between Australia and Northern Europe, the current supply also comes from the spot market.

Woodside has had a supply contract for liquid gas with Uniper since the beginning of September.

But that amounts to twelve shiploads from the trade quota that are sent from Singapore to Europe.

Because the large delivery quantities from Australia have been sold to North Asia for years, especially to countries like Japan, South Korea and China.

The shipload from Western Australia to Rotterdam thus has a particularly high symbolic value.

"At times like this, it's even more important that buyers and sellers work together to be flexible in responding to market dynamics," Abbotsford said.

Woodside itself did not provide any information on further deliveries on Monday;

Interesting but controversial business model

Despite the long journey, this can be an interesting business for the Australians.

On the one hand because of the development of an extremely long supply chain.

On the other hand, because LNG prices are currently hovering around their highest level in seven weeks after a key supply facility in the USA went down and temperatures in North Asia are falling.

Australia exported more than 7 million tonnes of LPG in October alone.

Analysts estimate sales for the hundred shiploads at a record value of almost 11 billion Australian dollars (7.14 billion euros).

However, the export of gas from Australia is quite controversial: Because the fifth continent exports such quantities that the prices along the east coast in the natural resource country itself are skyrocketing.

There, industrial customers in particular with contracts that expire at the end of the year are now increasingly concerned that gas prices will no longer be reasonable.

Politically, they are much more difficult to convey than in Germany, for example, because Australia itself has enormous deposits.

But the companies preferred to sell them to Asia at top prices.

The political mistake of not imposing quotas on companies to supply their own country is now taking its toll.