South Korean LNG imports fell last month as deliveries from Yemen LNG were curtailed and storage levels remained high, though the average price paid per cargo was over $2 per million British thermal units higher than in the previous year.
The latest monthly imports brought the annual total of shipments to Korea for 2012 to 36.25MT, little changed from the 2011 total of 36.68MT.
However, average prices for the year were at $14.57 per MMBtu for a cargo in 2012 compared with $12.53 per MMBtu the previous year, a price rise of over 16 percent.
Cargo deliveries for December amounted to 4.32 million tonnes compared with 4.77M tonnes, a drop of 9.5 percent compared with the same month the previous year, according to customs data.
The average price paid for the LNG imports was $762 per tonne from $750 per tonne and the total monthly cost of the shipments was almost $3.3 billion.
The main import countries remained Qatar and Indonesia, with other volumes coming from spot purchases originating in Trinidad, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea.
The highest price paid was for a re-export cargo from Belgium at a cost of $18.02 per MMBtu, and the least expensive was a Russian shipment of LNG at $6.25 per MMBtu.
South Korean LNG imports in November had risen more than 30 percent compared with the same period a year ago because of concern over emergency power storage capacity linked to a
nuclear plant shutdown.
Korea Gas Corp., the world's largest corporate buyer of LNG, said recently its LNG stocks stood at more than 80 percent of storage capacity at the three import terminal its owns at Incheon,
Pyeong-Taek and Tong-Yeung.
The three LNG terminals have the largest combined maximum storage capacity in the world at almost 8 million cubic metres at any one time.
Such storage levels give the country an estimated winter reserve of around 2.9MT of LNG, which is equivalent of one month of usage.
Kogas has been buying more spot LNG to make up for cancelled or delayed cargoes from Yemen LNG, which has suffered a series of terrorist attacks since October 2011 on its feed-gas pipeline.
Kogas has a key long-term delivery contract with the plant.
