ConocoPhillips Chief Commercial Officer Khoa Dao oversees the company's commercial operations, which covers the marketing, trading, transport and delivery of natural gas, LNG, crude oil, NGLs and power. He recently spoke with spiritnow about ConocoPhillips' involvement in major gas conferences and shared his outlook on the future of LNG and Commercial business growth.
You and several other ConocoPhillips leaders spoke at the 2025 World Gas Conference in May. What made participating in this event significant for ConocoPhillips?
It is important for ConocoPhillips to be recognized and sought out as a thought leader in the energy industry. As you know, policies, regulations and fiscal regimes all have such a huge impact on our business. Having certainty and understanding the rules of the game are critically important for us to make long-term investment and commercial commitments.
The World Gas Conference in Beijing provided us with a seat at the table to offer solutions that meet the world's energy demand and at the same time advocate for what we believe to be the interests of our stakeholders.
I hope the speeches, panel sessions, round tables and meetings were helpful to leaders and policymakers as they shape global energy policies and regulations that will impact us for years to come.
Your panel was entitled The Future of Corporate Positioning in LNG. What was the concept behind that and what key messages did you deliver?
It was a diverse panel, and it was a good opportunity for me to meet new industry peers. The concept was to explore what LNG meant to each company's portfolio. The panelists represented a diverse cross section of the LNG and energy sector. It included representatives from the European regas infrastructure (the process of converting LNG back to its gaseous form); state-owned integrated energy companies that produce and import LNG for domestic consumption; and international oil companies, who are big players in the LNG space.
Each company approached LNG slightly differently, but there was one common theme that emerged — LNG will continue to play an increasing role to meet global energy demand, provide energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions … and probably in that order.
The key messages for ConocoPhillips were simple. We believe LNG demand will continue to grow at 5% per annum over the next decade, doubling demand from 400 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) today to nearly 800 MTPA by 2050. We see this growth as complementary to the significant growth in renewable energy.
ConocoPhillips has a long history in LNG, over 65 years in fact. Having pioneered our own proprietary Optimized Cascade® process technology, we participate in every segment of the LNG value chain — from gas production to gathering, gas processing, liquefaction, shipping, regasification and wholesale gas sales — we understand the business.
ConocoPhillips is expanding its LNG business to include multiple LNG supply points, a sales portfolio that stretches from Asia to Europe including access to regasification terminals, and an LNG vessel fleet that allows us to connect supplies to markets. We are building a diverse LNG portfolio that gives us flexibility to optimize while serving our customers. Our size, balance sheet and capabilities are well suited to growing the LNG business.
The conference was in Beijing this year where the ConocoPhillips China business unit took great pride in supporting the event, including the LNG Licensing & Technology team’s booth. Describe what it was like and how it served our objectives for the conference.
I was thoroughly impressed. There was exceptional planning, organization and execution by our LNG team and the China business unit. I was proud of the displays and the ConocoPhillips representation.
At our booth, we were able to meet VIPs, partners and potential customers. In addition, the reception that ConocoPhillips hosted was well attended. It was a great opportunity to meet new customers and partners.
We welcomed one of our key LNG customers with whom we just signed an LNG sales and purchase agreement during the conference. We also celebrated with Sinopec as we successfully completed the price review for our LNG sales and purchase agreement between Australia Pacific LNG and Sinopec.
Overall, I thought Beijing was a gracious host city, and the World Gas Conference hosted by the International Gas Union was an exceptional experience.
Looking ahead to Gastech, the next global natural gas and LNG event in September, how will ConocoPhillips approach this opportunity to tell our story and interact with stakeholders?
I'm looking forward to Gastech in Milan this September. It’s a smaller conference than the one held in Houston in 2024, but it gives us an opportunity to spend more time with a few key customers.
We've made meaningful progress across several fronts — securing more offtake, evaluating additional term sales and adding regas capacity in Europe, which is part of our overall strategy.
To date, we have added regas capacity in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands.
It is fitting to engage the European market while in Milan about what we can do and what we can offer our customers. Our regasification capacity allows ConocoPhillips to bring much needed U.S. LNG to Europe, which improves their energy security through supply diversification. Europe still imports 17 to 18 MTPA of LNG from Russia.
I want to give a shoutout to LNG 2026, which will be held in Doha in February. It will be a major event, and we plan on having a senior delegation of executives in attendance. This is important to us, given our presence in Qatar.
What opportunities do you see on the horizon to further grow ConocoPhillips’ LNG portfolio and for the company’s Commercial business?
ConocoPhillips continues to make good progress towards our 15 MTPA offtake ambition for LNG. We are active in the market and see opportunities to pursue additional offtake volumes from the U.S. Gulf Coast. We like the spread between Henry Hub and international gas or international LNG pricing.
Now as part of the Marathon Oil acquisition and integration, we have also taken over responsibilities for marketing our equity LNG from Equatorial Guinea. We will continue to build on that position and look to diversify our LNG offtake with supplies outside of the U.S.
We are advancing a number of sales opportunities as well, mostly in Asia and Europe. We are quickly building the scale and diversification with multiple supply and sales points that will allow us to optimize our portfolio.
I am also excited about the work that we are undertaking to explore the boundaries of our commercial model and how we can add more value to ConocoPhillips. We will have more to discuss on this topic in the future.
