Key LNG buyers, including the Japanese, called for more supply flexibility at a Singapore conference this week.
This was needed to adapt to variable power demand, industry executives said.
LNG suppliers, such as Qatar, prefer long-term contracts with buyers that can last decades in order to secure financing, especially for multi-billion dollar projects.
However, in recent years with more producers entering the market, buyers were seeking shorter-term contracts with flexibility to resell cargoes when demand was low.
"What we are looking for is flexibility in both our long- and short-term contracts in order to manage the uncertainties we face," Jonathan Westby, Senior Vice President of LNG at Japan's JERA Global Markets, told the conference.
He said the company faced an increasingly variable and less predictable customer load, and buys and sells LNG depending on the weather and nuclear power availability.
Japan's LNG demand outlook is falling, due to nuclear reactor restarts and more renewable energy, but the pace of decline was uncertain.
Nuclear power accounted for 9% of Japan's power generation mix last year.
Japan shut all 54 of its reactors after the powerful 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the nuclear plant.
However, the country now runs 11 nuclear reactors, with restarts contributing to an 8% fall in LNG imports last year to the lowest in 14 years.
Top LNG importer China’s power demand fluctuates between summer and winter and by region, said Zhang Yaoyu, global head of LNG and new energies at state-run PetroChina International.
"Unfortunately in China, we live in an environment where there are huge supply and demand imbalances," he said.
Along with other buyers at the Asia Gas Markets Conference, both companies said supply diversification was key to managing fluctuating demand.
Mexico Pacific's Chief Marketing Officer, Sungbok Park said that while long-term deals were still preferred, he was seeing contract terms evolve on the buyer's and seller's side to enable more flexibility in managing volumes.
"This flexibility is becoming even more important as market conditions continue to shift, so existing producers and portfolio suppliers are warming up to flexible contract structures.
"However, for new projects, we still need 15-20 year commitments to meet project financing requirements," he added.
Intermediaries could step in to bridge the gap between buyers and sellers, added Steve Hill, Executive Vice President at trading house Mercuria.
"What producers and buyers want are diverging over time. Producers are typically looking for 20-year contracts with buyers, to enable the financing to develop projects ... while buyers tend to have more uncertainty to manage.
"So the world has more of a need for intermediaries to manage the risk between what producers want and what buyers want," he said.
