China Natural Gas Imports in Oct Jump 16% Y-O-Y
According to the latest statement of China General Administration of Customs (CGAC), China’s natural gas import in October slipped to 7.53 million tons, dropping by 13% from September and for the second month in a downtrend, but in the meantime, the annual growth rate jumped to 16% from the same month of 2019, the highest growth rate in the past 21 months. The accumulative annual import volume of natural gas has reached 81.25 million tons, up 4.7% Y-O-Y.
On the one hand, 2019’s October import was unusually low, because the traditional pipeline entered maintenance to prepare for the winter rush while LNG imports also weakened due to cut-off deals and incident at some terminal. On the other hand, the pipeline system entered maintenance this October with shorter durations, but the nearly full UGS in China crippled the PNG import potentials as well. For the LNG import, intensive arrivals at the end of the month (six cargoes) are expected to finish clearance in November, while the rising spot price also suppressed buying interests, especially when the winter peak season was not started yet.
