Our next LNG delivery is in one month in Europe, on DES (ex-ship) basis, and we believe the cargo will load in Nigeria : a typical nine-day voyage, granting us a couple weeks to finalize the paperwork. Some time to breathe.
But the phone wakes up. It is our seller’s operations team, urging us to email documents because their ship is about to load. In Peru.
LNG trade obeys to rules that can puzzle at first sight but make sense at a global scale. Although Peru is thousand nautical miles further away, the reshuffle will ultimately optimize the seller’s position and fleet utilization rate, or reduce its risk exposure.
Coincidentally, two months later I am in Cuzco, for vacation. Exploring the Sacsayhuamán ruins, I am fascinated by the Incas’ advanced building and communication techniques. Atahualpa was the last Inca emperor and one of the first victims of our globalized world. Had Incas survived, god knows how they would have approached LNG transportation and trading !
Maybe they would have invented the Incaterms.
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