LNG

Chinese liquefied natural gas imports increased by over 28 percent last month, though the recovery in cargo deliveries may not be enough to recapture the No. 1 global LNG importer position in 2023 that was ceded to Japan in 2022.

Chinese liquefied natural gas imports increased by more than 34 percent last month with additional cargoes pointing at North Asia from the US, Qatar and Australia and with the percentage boosted by the much lower level of deliveries reported in August 2022 because of Covid-19 lockdowns in the main cities of China.

Deliveries of LNG to China’s growing network of import terminals amounted to 6.32 million tonnes, or 93 cargoes, in August 2023 compared with 4.72MT, or 70 cargoes, in August 2022, an increase of 34.1 percent, according to data from the Chinese General Administration of Customs.

Imports to Chinese network of 25 regasification terminals in the January-to-August period of 2023 came to 45.51MT, up by 14.5 percent from the 40.64MT reported in the first eight months of 2022.

Main suppliers

China’s main LNG suppliers are Australia, Qatar, the US, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Yamal plant in Arctic Russia.

Chinese energy imports in August from Russia, mostly oil and gas, increased 13.3 percent from a year earlier to $11.52 billion.

China also receives varying volumes of pipeline gas through links from the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as from Russia as part of Gazprom's “Power of Siberia” project.

The “Power of Siberia” pipeline runs for 3,000km (1,865 miles) through Siberia and into northeast China and a “Power of Siberia II” pipeline is being planned to deliver gas to China via Mongolia.

Additional pipelines inside China carry the gas for a further 2,110km through eight Chinese provinces in the north to Shanghai in eastern China.

Gas supply from the “Power of Siberia” pipeline reached just over 5 billion cubic metres in 2020, then 10.4 Bcm in 2021 and rose to 15 Bcm in 2022.

The volumes of Russian pipeline gas deliveries to China in 2023 are expected to reach around 22 Bcm.

Crude oil

China's crude oil production, processing and imports registered strong expansion in August, the Chinese data showed.

The country produced 17.47MT of its own crude oil last month, up 3.1 percent year on year.

China's total imports of crude oil stood at 52.8MT, a jump fo 30.9 percent from August 2022.

The data also shows that the country processed 64.69MT of crude oil at refineries in the same period, an increase of 19.6 percent.

China had imported an average of 11.4 million barrels of crude oil per day in the first half of 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022’s annual average of 10.2 million barrels a day.

The Chinese sourced much of the additional crude oil it imported in the first half from Russia, Iran, Brazil and the US. 

Compared with 2022 averages, China’s imports from Russia increased by 23 percent (400,000 b/d), from Saudi Arabia by 7 percent (130,000 b/d) and from Brazil by 49 percent (250,000 b/d).