Chokepoint disruptions, cargo bidding wars, and crude above $100. The old valuation models weren’t built for this — and deals priced on pre-2022 assumptions are already looking expensive.

The LNG market has always been geopolitically sensitive. But what we’re navigating now is categorically different from the supply shocks of prior decades. We are operating in a fragmented, multipolar energy market where trade flows are being redrawn in real time — and where the commercial value of an LNG asset is inseparable from its geopolitical positioning.

For anyone currently running M&A processes or equity investment decisions in this space, the central challenge is this: how do you accurately model and value the flexibility of a global LNG platform — a Gorgon, a Pluto, a LNG Canada — when the geopolitical volatility is not a tail risk to be stress-tested, but a base-case condition to be priced in?

“Flexibility is no longer a premium feature of an LNG asset. In a multipolar market, it is the asset.”