Ever since I entered the LNG industry in 2005, I heard the same sentence repeated with almost religious certainty.
“LNG is an oddity. It will never become truly important. It can never compete with pipeline gas.”
Every single year.
Every single conference.
Every single market cycle.
It became one of those accepted truths that nobody seemed to question, despite the evidence slowly accumulating right in front of everyone’s eyes.
Yet while the experts confidently explained why LNG would remain a niche, the LNG world quietly got on with proving them wrong.
And it did so spectacularly.
More than twenty years after I first stepped into this fascinating corner of the energy business, the global LNG economy is no longer simply larger than it was back then. It is several times the size. Entire markets have emerged where none existed. Countries that had never imported a single cargo have become regular buyers. Exporters have appeared in places that nobody would have imagined twenty years ago. Floating terminals, floating liquefaction plants and ever more sophisticated trading networks have fundamentally changed the geography of energy.
But it wasn’t merely a story of increasing volumes.
The market itself evolved.
When I joined the industry, LNG as a transport fuel was little more than an interesting curiosity discussed by enthusiasts and early adopters. Today it has become an established solution in large parts of heavy transport, with mature supply chains, dedicated infrastructure and a rapidly expanding ecosystem.
LNG bunkering scarcely existed.
Today it is recognised as one of the defining developments in modern shipping, with ports across the world routinely supplying LNG-powered vessels and an entire generation of ships designed around the fuel.
Small-scale LNG was once confined to a handful of specialised applications that most people inside the industry barely paid attention to.
Today it is everywhere.
Remote industries, isolated communities, industrial users and distributed energy systems all make use of solutions that barely existed when I first entered the business.
The technology has changed just as dramatically.
Back then, LNG could occasionally feel… predictable. Engineering solutions followed familiar patterns, logistics were relatively conservative and innovation often progressed cautiously.
Today the market is bursting with imagination.
New containment systems. Floating infrastructure. Modular liquefaction. Digital optimisation. Innovative transfer technologies. Ever more efficient engines. Entirely new business models. The engineering creativity now on display would have seemed remarkably ambitious twenty years ago.
Even the ships themselves have transformed.
The giants that once seemed impossibly large have been eclipsed by vessels whose size and efficiency would have astonished the industry I first encountered.
Will LNG become the backbone of the world’s energy system during my lifetime?
Probably not.
The world is simply too large and too diverse for any single energy source to dominate everything.
But that was never really the point.
The real story is that LNG has consistently exceeded expectations while generations of commentators confidently predicted that it never would.
It connected markets that had previously been isolated.
It improved energy security.
It introduced genuine competition into places where consumers once had little choice.
It gave countries flexibility they had never possessed before.
It enabled entirely new industries to emerge.
And along the way it became one of the most dynamic, innovative and globally connected sectors anywhere in the energy world.
For those of us fortunate enough to have spent our careers watching it evolve from what many dismissed as an oddity into one of the defining energy industries of the twenty-first century, it has been an extraordinary journey.
There were disappointments.
There were market collapses.
There were projects that never happened and dreams that remained just that.
But the successes were far more numerous.
Many were spectacular.
Some quietly changed the world.
Looking back after more than two decades, I cannot help but smile every time I hear someone confidently explain what LNG can never become.
I’ve heard that story before.
It has a remarkably poor track record.
Here’s to LNG.
It has been one hell of a ride.