A big topic in German politics in the recent years is the Nord Stream project - a gas pipeline that would carry Russian natural gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea, bypassing the usual transit countries such as Ukraine or Poland so as not to give them this hostage opportunity (actually, such a pipeline already exists; the project is to add more lines to increase capacity). For exactly this reason, the usual transit countries are heavily opposed to it. It’s a debate freight with politics.
Nordstream 1 has two lines in operation. Nordstream 2 is a project to futher increase capacity had a lot of opposition from Ukraine and poland who get a fair bit of cash from transit charges. Ukraine came to an agreement with Russia back in 2018 after Nordstream 2 was delayed after it became a target of US sanctions. Back in December 2017 the Swiss company that owned the pipe laying barge was sanctioned by the US to bring a halt to Nordstream 2 construction. The cover story was the US didn’t want Russia benefiting from gas export revenue, another reason was to protect US LNG exports to Europe.
The US is the world’s 3rd largest LNG exporter now.
Which is not to disagree with Schnitte, just adding the US is another country in opposition.
Indeed, and that is another big issue in politics here; it brings the Atlanticism story into the equation. The American point is that Germany shouldn’t increase its (already considerable) energy dependency on Russia; the German point of view (or rather, the German government’s; the whole thing is very controversial here too) is that the new line helps decrease the dependency on the transit countries.
As for a Saudi Arabia-to-the-Mediterranean pipeline, it’s feasible to do that traversing only two countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. To me that looks like it promises a reasonable amount of stability. Then again, you’d need to have submaritime segments in the Red Sear or the Gulf of Aqaba, which can be susceptible to all kinds of shenanigans third-country navies might attempt.
The LNG aspect is also a good example of why use a tanker instead of a pipeline. Sure LNG compression trains and the regasification plants and the tankers are quite expensive, but from a sellers point of view the markets you can sell into are hugely expanded and you take stranded gas to a saleable product. From a buyers point of view you have whole bunch more suppliers you can shop around from, plus you have the storage tank aspect of the LNG ship which is a useful buffer against immediate outages or demand surges, there is also a side benefit as the tanker is a giant bucket of cryogenic liquid, so if you can co-locate the regasification plant with a process that needs a lot of cooling which many petrochemical process do need, it’s a winner, use the LNG as a coolant for other things during regasification.
Oil tankers vs pipe lines have the same benefit , easier matching of buyers and sellers and as was mentioned up thread , different crudes have different properties, and different refineries by design may be better at handling different crudes or want different feedstock. Buyers or sellers have more options to sell to or buy from various countries they want be it for political reasons and tankers have the advantage of being relatively secure floating storage as a buffer for demand surges or against price fluctuations. Sure you can , and people do, build storage tanks for oil on land, but they are not cheap either , and take up a lot of land. Yes the US SPR (strategic petroleum reserve) storage facilities are under ground but those are a bit of a special case.