By: Christophe Begat - Vice President for, Industry and Segment for Sub-Saharan Africa at Schneider Electric

The global LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) sector is entering an historic chapter with analysts expecting it to grow by 50%  (from 2025 to 2030), representing its largest growth cycle to date.

A significant share of this new capacity is expected to come online in the  2026–2028 period, led by projects in the United States, Qatar, and other regions that have already reached Final Investment Decision (FID).

The LNG marketplace’s development is aimed at reinforcing energy security, stabilising supply chains, and meet rising demand in Asia and Europe, where it plays a critical role in diversifying away from pipeline dependence.

Similarly, in Africa, LNG is also showing exciting growth, with the 2026 to 2028 period also marking an important delivery window that will see the continent becoming a much stronger anchor in global gas markets.  Countries like Nigeria, Mozambique and Angola are the forefront of this growth.

However, expanding LNG capacity at speed is no longer just an engineering and construction challenge, it is a coordination challenge and without the right digital foundation, the surge in projects risks creating complexity rather than capability.

The LNG trilemma: secure supply, lower emissions, tighter costs

LNG operators today are navigating a three-way pressure point: secure supply, lower emissions, and tighter costs, all at once.

For one, energy security remains essential as countries seek to reduce vulnerability and ensure reliable fuel access. At the same time, inflation and cost volatility are squeezing margins, while sustainability expectations are rising, with “greener LNG” standards and emissions performance under sharper scrutiny.

This mix is therefore forcing new decision‑making, which means throughput alone is no longer enough; reliability, safety, efficiency, and emissions reduction must improve together.

The LNG industry’s expansion is in essence a “systems of systems” which include upstream supply, liquefaction trains, shipping, regasification, and downstream distribution. It’s a lot of moving parts, and each new asset adds variables: people, processes, equipment, controls, data, suppliers, maintenance, regulation, and emissions reporting.

And more assets don’t automatically mean more capability and without digital coordination, it means more complexity. That’s why digital transformation is shifting from a reporting layer to the operating backbone that makes scale possible.

Establishing the digital backbone

What is clear from the above LNG growth is structure is repeatable; optimisation is not.

Repeatable structure means standardising how data is captured, contextualised, governed, and used across sites, thus what works at one plant can be scaled to others. 

Optimisation, however, is dynamic, it depends on operating conditions, equipment health, energy availability, demand, emissions constraints, and risk which are going through perpetual change

The answer is therefore a digital backbone that can do both: provide repeatable structure, while enabling continuous optimisation.

AVEVA, Schneider Electric’s industrial software arm, provides the following features that enables the digital backbone: 

1. Captures real-time data from sensors, systems and industrial devices.

2. Structures data for reuse through contextual models and governance.

3. Contextualises operational conditions and provides consistent asset frameworks

4. Offers insight through diagnostics and predictive analytics.

5. Visualises information in dashboards that match how teams actually work.

6. Simulates future scenarios using dynamic simulation and digital twins.

Furthermore, Schneider Electric delivers the convergence of IT, OT and engineering systems, and the ability to connect layers such as HMI, SCADA, DCS, edge and IoT into an architecture that supports secure visibility and optimisation at scale.

Looking at real-world examples of Schneider Electric and AVEVA LNG success stories which demonstrate the importance of digital backbone at work:

• Nigeria LNG - -transitioned from spreadsheets to an AVEVA digital twin that merged engineering and real time plant data. This improved visualisation, enabled predictive analytics, and reduced plant losses while boosting uptime.
• Cheniere Energy in the US - faced with the complexity of nine LNG trains, the company applied AVEVA’s data management and asset frameworks to cut time to production, streamline commissioning, and improve reliability
• Cameron LNG in the US - closed daily “time to decision” gaps by giving field staff direct access to operational data through Schneider Electric and AVEVA solutions, reducing delays, strengthening safety reporting, and increasing workforce engagement.

Ultimately, we believe LNG’s digital backbone must be active, not a static archive of information, but a system that senses, adapts, and continuously improves decision-making across the value chain. 

The LNG sector is not only racing to build but also racing to make faster decisions with better information, and with less risk.