Japanese liquefied natural gas imports jumped for a third month in July with higher volumes arriving from all regions apart from the Middle East at prices over 40 percent higher than a year ago, while thermal coal shipments for power use also jumped as the nation hosted the Olympic Games.
The July 2021 LNG shipments amounted to 6.18MT, or around 90 cargoes, which was 2.5 percent higher than the 6.03MT received in July 2020, according to the trade figures from Japan's Ministry of Finance.
The June deliveries had amounted to 5.70MT, up 8.5 percent from the 5.26MT received in June 2020.
Japan’s shipments in July 2021 cost 343.62 billion yen ($3.21Bln), a rise of 42 percent on the 242.14Bln ($2.20Bln) spent in July 2020 for slightly fewer cargoes.
LNG competes mainly with thermal coal for power generation in Japan.
Japan’s thermal coal imports in July 2021 came to 9.81MT, which was 10.90 higher than the level of shipments a year ago and on June’s imports of 7.49MT of thermal coal.
Nuclear power generation in Japan is still much reduced with only five plants with nine reactors from a total of 16 plants with 50-plus reactors having gained the agreement of local authorities to resume operations.
Just nine of these reactors are currently on line at six plants.
LNG cargo deliveries to Japan during July 2021 from nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Brunei rose by 24.6 percent to 1.44MT compared with July 2020.
Middle East shipments from countries like Qatar and Oman dropped 8.8 percent year-on-year to 886,000 tonnes.
Shipments from Russia last month almost doubled to 761,000 tonnes. US cargo deliveries to Japan also jumped year-on-year but at a more modest 31 percent to 611,000 tonnes.
The balance of imports in July 2021 came from Australia, African nations and the spot market.
That segment of the imports was higher than the previous month at 2.48MT compared with 2.25MT in June 2021.
Annual shipments of LNG to the Japanese import network of 37 facilities came to 74.46MT in 2020, down 3.7 percent compared with the 77.32MT received in 2019.
Imports by the world’s largest buyer of LNG have continued to drop in recent years. The 2019 total of 77.32MT was 6.7 percent lower than the 82.85MT logged in 2018.
