Top global LNG importer Korea Gas to transition fully to hydrogen

Korea Gas, one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas importers, expects to win benefits from its current business as it shifts to a future focused on hydrogen.

“We’ll completely transform our LNG-driven operations into hydrogen by 2050 in line with South Korea’s carbon neutrality target,” Lee Jae Hoon, a general manager of the company’s hydrogen business development team, said in an interview.

“We have advantages over utilising our existing gas infrastructure, technology and experience.”

The state-run gas distributor, also known as Kogas, expects to begin green hydrogen imports from 2027, and intends to invest in production of the zero-emissions fuel in places including Australia and the Middle East, as it currently does with LNG.

Kogas is joining several global energy majors in pushing the case for hydrogen, and BP confirmed this week it would press ahead on projects with two of the UAE’s biggest energy companies.

While the gas is billed as potentially key to curbing emissions from carbon-heavy industrial processes like steelmaking, the market is still in its infancy.

There’s also been debate over plans from existing energy suppliers to use fossil fuels and carbon capture to produce hydrogen, rather than processes that require only renewable electricity and water.

By 2026, Kogas plans to complete demonstration projects to blend 20 per cent of hydrogen into the existing gas pipeline across South Korea and would aim to keep increasing the proportion, Mr Hoon said on the sidelines of the 2022 World Gas Conference in Daegu.

The proposal would require more than a million tonnes of hydrogen and reduce South Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions by 7.5 million tonnes, Kogas said in a statement this week.

South Korea’s national emissions were 727.6 million tonnes in 2018, a government filing shows.

Although Kogas is planning for some production of green hydrogen — made using zero-emissions electricity — domestically, the nation is constrained by a lack of available land for solar and wind projects.

The importer is in discussions with local shipbuilders to develop liquid hydrogen vessels and is also working on technologies for storage tanks, said Mr Hoon.

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”