Shell Says Global LNG Trade Volume Can Match 2025 Despite Hormuz Disruption
The world's biggest LNG trader expects volumes to hold year-on-year even as Middle East conflict slows flows, though Europe's storage shortfall raises the stakes for autumn.
Shell, the world's largest LNG trader, said on Tuesday (2026-06-30) that global LNG trade volumes this year could match 2025 levels despite the Strait of Hormuz crisis having stalled demand growth, while forecasting a 65% surge in global LNG demand by 2050 from current levels.5
The distinction matters. Matching 2025 volumes would mean the LNG market has absorbed the Hormuz disruption through rerouting and demand-side adjustment without a net reduction in traded cargoes. But matching is a floor, not a ceiling, and the path to that outcome involves sustained pressure on European storage refilling targets through a summer when incremental LNG barrels are harder to source.5
ICE Endex TTF front-month was trading at €45.33 per megawatt-hour as of Friday's close (2026-07-04), with the Q+1 strip at €40.42 and Cal+1 at €33.85. JKM front-month, which reflects spot LNG prices into Asia, stood at $16.07 per mmBtu. The TTF-JKM arb remains the key signal for how European buyers compete for cargoes against Asian demand.
European gas network operators have already flagged the storage risk in explicit terms. Entso-G, the group of EU transmission system operators, warned on Thursday (2026-05-21) that storage could reach only 76% of capacity by 1 October under a tight LNG scenario in which imports total 71 billion cubic metres for the summer. Reaching the mandatory 90% target would require an unprecedented 86bcm of LNG imports — a volume the group said the market has never delivered in a comparable period. Any unplanned maintenance or supply disruption would put the 90% target further out of reach.1
The gap between the tight-scenario outcome and the regulatory floor is what makes Shell's annual volume estimate consequential. If total traded volumes match last year, the question is where those cargoes flow. Europe competes for spot LNG against buyers in South and Southeast Asia, whose demand Shell identified as the primary engine of long-run growth toward the 2050 target. Near-term, those regional flows pass through the Hormuz bottleneck, or find longer routes around it.5
The chokepoint problem does not resolve itself even in a well-supplied global market. E3G, a climate and energy think tank, argued in a study published in late March (2026-03-24) that import-dependent economies remain exposed to recurring energy security risks from chokepoints regardless of overall supply levels. Physical rerouting is possible but adds freight cost and delivery time, reducing the effective volume available to buyers in any given two-week window.4
European buyers have been managing this exposure through direct commercial arrangements. Shell agreed a 100 million cubic metre LNG cargo delivery from Turkey to Bulgaria in May, with traders calculating it would cover 12.5% of Bulgaria's summer gas demand. Bulgaria consumes 600 to 800mcm in summer against annual demand of 3bcm. One cargo at that scale offers what traders described as flexibility for the local and regional market — but it also illustrates that European operators are now sourcing in increments rather than through the long-term contracted volumes that historically anchored the region's supply.2
The structural shift behind that fragmentation is the collapse in Russian pipeline supply. Russian gas now accounts for 18% of EU imports, down from 45% in 2021, while Russian oil's share of European imports has fallen to 3% from roughly 30% four years ago. The replacement volumes have come from LNG, predominantly from the United States and Qatar, but the sourcing chain is longer, more exposed to spot price volatility, and now subject to a chokepoint risk that pipeline supply from Russia never carried.3
Shell's longer-run demand projection — 65% growth by 2050 — is a commercially motivated forecast from the market's dominant trader. It should be read as such. The company benefits from infrastructure investment and long-term contract growth. But the 2026 near-term signal is harder to dismiss: global traded volumes holding at 2025 levels despite a Hormuz crisis is itself a demonstration that supply chains have adapted faster than markets initially feared. The outstanding question is whether adaptation has been fast enough to fill European storage before the injection season closes, with the Entso-G tight-scenario estimate of 76% by October still sitting well below the mandatory threshold of 90%.1,5