Japan, which formally took back the World No. 1 LNG importer spot from China in 2022, reported a small rise in LNG shipments in January though at a much higher cost than in the prior-year period.
Imports for January amounted to 6.82 million tonnes, or about 100 cargoes, and an increase of 0.5 percent from the 6.78MT received in January 2022, according to Japan's Finance Ministry.
The imports cost 873.8 billion yen ($6.54Bln), which was 57 percent more than the 556.6Bln ($4.16Bln) cost of shipments in January 2022.
While China’s LNG imports dropped by 18.8 percent to 64.15MT, the official Japanese LNG import volumes for 2022 came to 71.99MT compared with 74.31MT in 2021, showing a fall of 3.1 percent but still enough to essily maintain the lead over China.
China had overtaken Japan in 2021 to become the world’s largest LNG importer with 78.93MT of imports, though then slipped back because of the economic slowdown and Covid-19 restrictions affecting energy demand.
Japan’s annual LNG costs jumped by 97.5 percent to 8.55 trillion yen ($64.34Bln) in 2022.
Monthly LNG imports for December 2022 to Japan’s network of 37 terminals had fallen by 13.8 percent to 6.06MT from 7.03MT in the same month of 2021.
Coal imports
Japan continued to use an increased proportion of thermal coal for electricity generation and the January coal imports rose by 1.3 percent from January 2022 to 10.68MT.
LNG cargo deliveries from Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia increased in January by 17.8 percent to 1.88MT.
Middle East cargo imports rose by 24.1 percent to 787,000 tonnes during the month.
LNG imports from the US tumbled by 73.9 percent year-on-year to 90,000 tonnes as cargoes from American export plants were pointed at Europe.
Imports from Russia declined on the month by 9.7 percent to 704,000 tonnes and cost 78.6Bln yen ($589M) for what amounted to 11 cargoes.
The cost to Japan of Russian deliveries for all of 2022 was 82.4 percent higher than in the previous year with the bill from the Russians coming to 677.5Bln yen ($5.24Bln).
Japan continues its deliveries of LNG from the Russian Far East plant at Sakhalin Island even after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as energy security outweighed the Western-led imposition of sanctions against Russia on the energy and financial fronts.
The balance of Japan's LNG imports in January amounted to 3.86MT in the form of deliveries from the country’s largest supplier Australia, some spot cargoes and small volumes from Africa.
In its energy mix in 2022, Japan has continued to delay more nuclear power re-starts meaning that volumes of LNG and coal purchases remain high.
Since the Fukushima disaster, only 10 reactors have been given the go-ahead to go back into operation compared with the 54 that were online in 2011 and which supplied around 30 percent of Japan’s energy needs.
A further 21 reactors have been decommissioned since 2011 and will never be re-started.
