LNG

China Gas Holdings, one of the leading non-state controlled companies in the Chinese city-gas and LNG sectors, has accepted full responsibility for the June 2021 explosion in the northeast province of Hubei Province that killed 25 people and left 27 others with serious injuries.

China’s Huaying Natural Gas, a private company building a city-gas business in the southern province of Guangdong, said it had begun construction of a liquefied natural gas import terminal with receiving capacity of 6 million tonnes per annum.

The facility is located in the port city Chaozhou and involved first-phase investment of 8 billion Chinese yuan ($1.22 billion) and with the start-up scheduled for 2023.

The company also plans to invest 4 billion yuan to build some ancillary facilities at the terminal and to purchase its own LNG carrier to bring in cargoes.

Three gas storage tanks with capacity of 200,000 cubic metres each will be built alongside the first stage of the Chaozhou project and another four storage tank are planned for the second phase.

The Chaozhou terminal will add to the seven LNG terminals already operated in Guangdong province, along with two other projects that are currently under construction.

A total of nine Chinese LNG projects, including new terminals and expansions, were scheduled to advance in 2020, though several have been delayed.

State-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corp. currently has capacity at nine of China’s network of the more than 20 LNG import terminals and ports.

CNOOC’s LNG import capacity is held at most of the regasification terminals south of Shanghai, the port city where it has capacity at one facility.

It has additionally been a foundation customer with the Australia Queensland Curtis export plant on Curtis Island, near Gladstone.

CNOOC said in its most recent earnings that it was planning to increase storage capacity at its Binhai import terminal under construction in the eastern Jiangsu province, where it would reserve two tanks to help with the imported gas needs for a province in Central China.

CNOOC said it would construct around 1.62 million cubic metres more of storage capacity for LNG at the facility.

The expansion will consist of six tanks, each with storage capacity of 270,000 cubic metres each and construction is expected to be completed in 2023.

The first phase of CNOOC’s Binhai LNG terminal is still being built and will be capable of receiving 3 million tonnes of LNG per annum and will have four storage tanks of 220,000 cubic metres each.

Total investment in the project has risen to 17 billion Chinese yuan ($2.60 billion), up from an initial estimate of 14.4Bln yuan ($2.2Bln).

CNOOC said that the government of Henan, a province in central China, will invest in two of the tanks, though CNOOC will operate them to meet growing natural gas demand in both Henan and Jiangsu.

China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), is the other main Chinese state-controlled LNG importer.

Sinopec, which plans to more than double its LNG receiving capacities to 41MT by 2025, currently has capacity at three Chinese import terminals and is a partner of US major ConocoPhillips in the Australia-Pacific LNG export plant in Queensland.

The Chinese company’s regasification capacity in addition to Tianjin is at two other facilities, the Qingdao terminal in Shandong province and the Beihai LNG terminal in the Guangxi autonomous region bordering Vietnam.

China is currently reforming its pipeline and terminal systems by giving more access to third-party shippers.

Sinopec’s plans include expanding the Tianjin terminal, which supplies Beijing, to have a capacity to handle 12MT of imports.

Chinese LNG imports surged by 33 percent last month with cargoes from nations such as Australia, Angola, Cuba, Russia and Qatar and were also up in the January-July period by 47 percent as the Asian nation maintained its growing levels of natural gas demand amid the commercial start-ups of more import infrastructure.