Wood Mackenzie and Ball introduce new LNG tracking tool

Energy intelligence group Wood Mackenzie and American aluminum packaging company Ball Corporation have launched a new tool that tracks global LNG liquefaction train statuses in near real-time.

On 13 July, Wood Mackenzie and Ball announced the launch of Global LNG Liquefaction Monitoring. This is the first product that comes from their strategic agreement to accelerate the development of analytics for energy markets.

According to WoodMac, the product provides near real-time market intelligence on liquefaction train statuses. The tool is a combination of Ball’s satellite expertise and remote sensing data analytics capabilities and Wood Mackenzie’s ground-based monitoring of U.S. liquefaction sites.

Lucas Schmitt, a principal analyst for Wood Mackenzie, said: “The number of liquefaction plant outages has increased significantly in recent years – and these events impact market prices. With LNG cargoes trading at record high prices, having access to timely and accurate data is critical.”

Wood Mackenzie’s proprietary dataset alerts users to train outages and restarts before other indicators, such as vessel tracking. For example, Wood Mackenzie’s algorithms detected maintenance on two Qatari trains in early February 2022 with a seven-day lead time before any other indicators.

“Our alerts flag disruptions so customers can react quickly and identify potential trading opportunities. Additionally, the high granularity of the data allows clients to understand train-level dynamics to derive valuable insight on companies involved in these assets,” Schmitt added.

Kendall Ackerman, director of Ball’s commercial-facing satellite analytics business, commented: “Through our collaboration with Wood Mackenzie, we are identifying new and exciting applications for our proprietary satellite analytics.”