Overview
FGE NexantECA’s detailed assessment of the mid- to long-term outlook for condensates provides comprehensive coverage of the key challenges facing the market today. In this study, we forecast condensate supply and demand globally using bottom-up modelling to explore trends in condensate trade and pricing from now until 2050.
It has been quite a ride for the oil and gas market this past year with the developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Middle East tensions (Israel-Hamas and Iran-Israel). Meanwhile, lower condensate output from key countries like Australia kept condensate differentials fairly supported through 2025 thus far.
Notwithstanding geopolitical uncertainties, the condensate market will see exciting developments in the next year or two.
New supplies from Qatar and Saudi Arabia will begin to lengthen the condensate market. We expect the first 50 kb/d train of Qatar’s North Field East (NFE) expansion and Phase 1 of Saudi Arabia’s Jafurah Basin development to start up by mid-2026. But given these projects’ gradual ramp-up timeline, the market should get some time between subsequent trains and phases to digest the new volumes. Upside to export availability in 2026 remains limited as both key projects would just be at the cusp of ramping up.
Meanwhile, Iran’s upcoming splitters should constrain South Pars condensate outflows over the next two years.
Gasoline length will continue to grow with the Dangote and Olmeca refineries’ incremental volumes in 2026. Octane remains relatively lengthy while the PX market is still in an oversupply. That said, olefins markets continue their dive into a capacity-driven downcycle, which does not bode well for integrated splitter margins. Stringing both supply and demand together, downward pressures to differentials are more likely in the latter part of the year. In the next decade, further increments in supply will very easily outpace the potential growth in merchant splitter demand. The huge net surplus in supplies will inevitably see volumes clearing into refineries, but increasing strength in the light distillate complex (mostly naphtha) should help limit the downside to condensate differentials and potentially even lend some support.
That said, looking to the 2040s, the growth in global condensate supplies should taper off as appetite for new gas projects thins. The refinery complex will progressively favour naphtha and petrochemical yields, though this will be increasingly (and more directly) met with a yield shift away from transportation fuels. Either way, condensates should be able to find a home while the value of naphtha is buoyed relative to pre-2030 levels.