LNG

Gaztransport and Technigaz (GTT), the French LNG storage technology company, has received another order from Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. in Northeast China for the tank designs for three LNG carrier newbuilds.

GTT said the latest order was received from its technology partner Dalian Shipbuilding on behalf of Chinese company China Energy.

The Paris-based company added that the tanks chosen for these three vessels, which will each offer a capacity of 175,000 cubic metres, will be the Mark III Flex membrane containment system.

GTT  said that the delivery of the vessels was scheduled for the first half of 2027 and the first quarter of 2028.

The latest order is the second this month from the Dalian yard after a previous order for two ships from Sea Jade Investment, a joint venture comprising Hong Kong-based shipping company Wah Kwong as well as China Gas and China Ship Leasing.

Capacities

Those two vessels will each have capacity of 175,000 cubic metres and will be fitted with the GTT Mark III Flex membrane containment system.

The delivery of the vessels for the Sea Jade consortium is scheduled between the first and the third quarters of 2027.

GTT has also noted in its most recent newsletter just published that the LNG sector had demonstrated more than 60 years of successful and safe operations. 

The French firm said it had contributed to this success though continuous innovation in new solutions, new design proposals and efficient assistance in the construction of well over 2.500 LNG storage tanks.

Modular tanks

GTT is also advancing marketing propositions for its modular LNG storage tanks that can be delivered by ships or barges, for example, to areas isolated from on the ground engineering expertise.

“Amid rising global energy prices and higher demand, new greenfield onshore projects are running into inflationary headwinds and facing significant challenges to deploy cost-effective LNG storage solutions,” said GTT.

“This is particularly true when accessing remote areas where logistics are complex and skilled manpower is difficult to deploy,” the firm added.

“Moreover, as projects become increasingly modularised, slower erection times inherent to stick-built tanks often drive overall project delivery,” GTT said.

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).