China’s First Inland River Terminal Project Initiating

According to SCI, China’s first inland river terminal, Wuhu Inland River Terminal Project has been approved by the government of Wuhu City, and the operator Huainan Mining Industry (Group) will soon start the early stage of the construction at Gaoan Section of Chankiang River located in Wuhu.

This is the first inland river LNG terminal on the national level, and there are many followers allegedly. The project was firstly advocated MOF of NDRC in the Changkiang River Delta Development Guideline issued on Jun 1, 2016, and was officially approved by NDRC in the Middle and Long-Term Oil and Gas Network Plan issued on May 19, 2017. Anhui provincial government added four peak-shaving reserve depots as matching facilities to the project, and the total reserve and peak-shaving capacity was designed at 70 million cbm.

According to the operator, a series of matching facilities will be matched to the terminal, such as the distributed gas power generating and utilization, natural gas pipeline grid, residential gas supply and peak-shaving facilities, industrial LNG P2P supply, NG vessel modification, LNG/CNG filling stations, etc. The operator also has a long-term plan to expand the LNG transship and distribution business to surrounding river systems such as the upstream and downstream of Changkiang, Wushen Canal, Huai River, Chao Lake, etc.

On the other hand, the river transport ship construction was also in progress. CNOOC’s CNOOC 301 LNG carrier and Huaxiang Shipping’s Huaxiang 8 have been put into operation already. Dalian Inteh’s 14,000 cbm LNG carrier and Ningbo Xinle Shipyard’s 30,000 cbm LNG carrier are under construction.

In all, China’s LNG market advanced rapidly in 2017, and the LNG import volume increased by near 50% from 2016. However, all existing terminals are all located at coastal areas, and the rivers areas urge to establish the transshipment system of LNG to reduce the high cost caused by the road truck delivery from coastal terminals to inland areas. However, NDRC still holds the inland river terminal and NG vessel development as pilot programs, and this newly emerging market still needs regulations and policy support, not only for the market itself but also for the downstream application areas such as the NGV river traffic management, etc.