Hi, good morning.
00:07
And we're here with Dr Egbert Laege who is the Managing Director for Securing Energy for Europe, SEFE, one of our speakers today here at the Cedigaz 2023 Annual meeting in Paris at this beautiful venue, the Latin Amerique.
00:25
And how are you enjoying it so far, Dr Laege? Yeah, it's very nice.
00:30
I think we had a very good morning with the with the conversations and laying out the framework in which our industry is operating and had a, I would say with the controversial speakers, a quite converging set of views on that which is I find very encouraging.
00:52
Very good to have the Deputy DG for Energy obviously here from the Commission, Matthew Baldwin and obviously some some really important people working within European associations, within the major players and working with the Commission and with government here in France, but across Germany, across northwest Europe.
01:12
What are your key components so far? What are you taking away from this? The the last year has had a huge knock on effect.
01:18
It sent shock waves around the energy world.
01:22
What's your mission at SEFE? What are you looking to do? What are you looking to achieve fundamentally? Yeah.
01:28
We have our mission in our name - Securing Energy for Europe.
01:32
So we are let's say a company that is globally sourcing our LNG and pipeline gas to supply European customers.
01:42
We just happen to have our headquarters in Berlin, in Germany and and so our mission is on one hand to secure the energy supply which is in rpredominantly gas, but as well to accelerate and enable the green transformation.
01:58
So this is what this, this basically this the second focus that we have besides supplying our existing customers with with natural gas as well to develop hydrogen solutions and even invest in hydrogen with our existing asset storage transportation, but as well thinking of upstream investments in hydrogen in order to facilitate the next chapter of gas in the energy mix.
02:26
So the enablement of that huge existing infrastructure, of course, SEFE, one of the largest gas storage companies in Europe, you have trillions of euros worth of infrastructure ultimately that's been been in place and do you see the best utilisation of that infrastructure for eventually bringing more and more hydrogen into the blend, into the system and that's where the future lies, dDo you think? The future speaking about 2035 onwards, yeah, for sure, the majority of that will then come from hydrogen.
02:58
But in the near term let's say basically the revenues and the bulk of the molecules provided will still be conventional gas and this is I think not to be forgotten.
03:13
While we are all very enthusiastic about hydrogen and focus all our efforts on hydrogen, which is very necessary, it will take still 5 to 10 years before we have hydrogen molecules or derivatives of those molecules in our in our energy system in Europe to a substantial part.
03:34
So we should not forget a little bit the backbone which is to be taken care of and as we have seen in the crisis year last year which still needs our highest attention.
03:47
And of course we've seen a a huge endorsement in the last 12 months from and this is what cooperation does when you have the Commission fully behind you, EU Parliament said all of our governments energy players, we're seeing huge investments of course especially in Germany, Northern Germany, FSRUs, LNG import facilities coming online at a real pace now across Europe.
04:09
That's really setting a tone for the next 5 to 10 years at least, isn't it? I mean, gas is here to stay.
04:14
LNG is going to play a significant role in that delivery of energy security.
04:19
So fundamentally, do we see LNG still being as important as it is right now in the next three to four to five years, what what are your views on that? Yes, absolutely.
04:32
So we will need the LNG volumes to really basically satisfy the energy demand that we have in Europe.
04:42
And as we have seen the LNG will have the highest impact on the prices in Germany, sorry, in Europe, but in Germany, Austria.
04:54
This is so basically all over Europe because the last molecule in the gas molecule that we are getting is the one that sets the price and that will be an LNG molecule .
05:03
And so even if volumes may vary over the the next years, the importance of LNG I think will be unquestioned for the next 10 years.
05:15
Interesting, excellent.
05:16
Well there we go, we're seeing here a very strong underpinning of the, the vital importance of LNG I think for Europe over the coming years.
05:26
Dr Laege, thank you very much.
05:28
Enjoy the rest of your time.
05:29
Thank you.
05:29
Thank you.