China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), one of the main Chinese LNG importers, is taking volumes from Western Australia as well as its booked cargoes from the Australia-Pacific export plant in Queensland in the East of the country.
The 159,800 cubic metres capacity carrier “Woodside Rogers” lifted a cargo around mid-November for the two-week voyage to Sinopec’s Tianjin North onshore terminal.
Sinopec said that its Tianjin North onshore LNG terminal had received 7.06 million tonnes of LNG since the start of 2020, almost the total of its contracted volumes from the Australia-Pacific LNG plant in Queensland.
Sinopec said the “Woodside Rogers” was the 107th LNG carrier to have docked and unloaded at Tianjin in 2020.
“Since Tianjin terminal started accepting LNG in 2018, it has received and unloaded a total of 248 ships with about 16.5MT,” said Sinopec.
“With the start of the winter heating, the terminal in Tianjin is important to ensure the natural gas supply for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region,” it added.
Sinopec additionally stated that its LNG imports rose to 12.53MT tonnes on an annualized basis, including more than 7MT from Australia.
Sinopec, which plans to more than double its LNG receiving capacities to 41MT by 2025, currently has capacity at three Chinese import terminals and is a partner of US major ConocoPhillips in the Australia-Pacific LNG export plant in Queensland.
The Chinese company’s regasification capacity in addition to Tianjin is at two other facilities, the Qingdao terminal in Shandong province and the Beihai LNG terminal in the Guangxi autonomous region bordering Vietnam.
China is currently reforming its pipeline and terminal systems by giving more access to third-party shippers.
Sinopec’s plans include expanding the Tianjin terminal, which supplies Beijing, to have a capacity to handle 12MT of imports.
It was recently estimated that China imported 23.5MT of Australian LNG in the first 10 months of 2020, in line with the same period last year.
Australia remains the world’s leading LNG exporter and will be just ahead of Qatar with 78MT of output in 2020 versus Qatar’s 77MT.
All Australian LNG projects export to China, though around half come from the three Queensland coal-seam-gas-to-LNG plants in which two Chinese companies have stakes.
Sinopec’s volumes from APLNG and China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s stake in the Royal Dutch Shell-owned Queensland Curtis LNG facility.
The Nangang import project being developed will give Tianjin port a third terminal scheduled to come on line in 2022 with 10 tanks and up to 2 million tonnes of storage.
Tianjin’s Nangang project is led by another company, Beijing Gas, and will have an initial 5 MTPA of capacity.
