INTERVIEW: BGN eyes LNG growth amid Iran war ‘opportunity’

As BGN expands into LNG, it aims to mirror the reach achieved in its well-established LPG arm, the trading group's co-heads of LNG, Ruben Mosquera Arias and Maria Eugenia Suardiaz, told Platts in an interview on April 20.

"The countries that import LPG and the countries that import LNG are pretty much the same, so it's good for us to leverage the company's expertise to be able to grow the LNG desk," Mosquera Arias said.

The duo joined BGN to guide its nascent LNG arm late last year from Spain's Repsol, where they also oversaw natural gas and LNG portfolios.

They are developing the company's LNG activities, even as the turmoil from the war in the Middle East scrambles supply chains for the super-chilled energy source and muddies the outlook for the market's growth.

"At the end of the day, gas and LNG is a fuel that has a lot of future and there will be demand for the LNG that is going to be produced," Mosquera Arias said.

Eugenia Suardiaz insisted that the disruptions spiraling from the war -- which have spurred global LNG prices to their highest levels since markets were grappling with the immediate fallout of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine -- have not shifted the company's overall approach much.

"That hasn't changed our strategy at all," she said. "On the other hand, what we can see is that it's a good moment. It's a real commercial opportunity to be agile."

Trade, growth

BGN aims to trade LNG across both the Atlantic and Pacific basins, Mosquera Arias and Eugenia Suardiaz explained.

The company signed its first long-term charter for an LNG vessel earlier this month and is currently eyeing long-term FOB deals to further develop its portfolio.

"We believe in flexibility," Mosquera Arias said. "Having access to an LNG ship, having access to FOB volumes on a long-term basis is something that will allow us to capture opportunities in the market and to grow."

Last year, BGN was one of several suppliers that landed deals to ship LNG to Egypt as the country copes with straining domestic gas production. BGN also reported completing its first physical LNG delivery into Germany in June 2025.

Mosquera Arias added that the company hopes to "soon" finalize licensing to gain access to operate in Europe. BGN is also interested in further infrastructure investments. While the two co-heads would not elaborate on the infrastructure moves they are considering, Mosquera Arias said they were open to "any opportunity" that could arise.

"We want to be integrated in the whole chain," he said. "Anything that can go from upstream to downstream, including midstream, is something that we are looking at."

Still, the company is holding off pushing to compete in the gas distribution space.

"I don't think we have as of now the capability to enter into the retail downstream market and be able to deliver physically the molecules more than to the hub -- for the time being," Mosquera Arias said. "In the future we can look at these opportunities."

Winter volatility risk

In the nearer term, the duo declined to offer pricing projections for the months ahead. Still, they stressed, two key factors for Europe's outlook are whether the supply disruptions from the Middle East war ease and the state of gas storage across the continent once the heating season starts.

"If those two things are in a weak situation, we can see huge volatility in Europe during this winter," Eugenia Suardiaz said.

Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, assessed the DES Northwest Europe LNG marker at $15.04/million British thermal unit on April 24, up 2% day over day.