LNG

JERA Co. Inc., the largest Japanese liquefied natural gas buyer, and Korea Gas Corp. (Kogas), its counterpart in South Korea, have signed an accord to cooperate in the LNG business.

Japan, which formally took back the World No. 1 LNG importer spot from China in 2022, reported a small rise in LNG shipments in January though at a much higher cost than in the prior-year period.

Imports for January amounted to 6.82 million tonnes, or about 100 cargoes, and an increase of 0.5 percent from the 6.78MT received in January 2022, according to Japan's Finance Ministry.

The imports cost 873.8 billion yen ($6.54Bln), which was 57 percent more than the 556.6Bln ($4.16Bln) cost of shipments in January 2022.

While China’s LNG imports dropped by 18.8 percent to 64.15MT, the official Japanese LNG import volumes for 2022 came to 71.99MT compared with 74.31MT in 2021, showing a fall of 3.1 percent but still enough to essily maintain the lead over China.

China had overtaken Japan in 2021 to become the world’s largest LNG importer with 78.93MT of imports, though then slipped back because of the economic slowdown and Covid-19 restrictions affecting energy demand.

Japan’s annual LNG costs jumped by 97.5 percent to 8.55 trillion yen ($64.34Bln) in 2022.

Monthly LNG imports for December 2022 to Japan’s network of 37 terminals had fallen by 13.8 percent to 6.06MT from 7.03MT in the same month of 2021.

Coal imports

Japan continued to use an increased proportion of thermal coal for electricity generation and the January coal imports rose by 1.3 percent from January 2022 to 10.68MT.

LNG cargo deliveries from Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia increased in January by 17.8 percent to 1.88MT.

Middle East cargo imports rose by 24.1 percent to 787,000 tonnes during the month.

LNG imports from the US tumbled by 73.9 percent year-on-year to 90,000 tonnes as cargoes from American export plants were pointed at Europe.

Imports from Russia declined on the month by 9.7 percent to 704,000 tonnes and cost 78.6Bln yen ($589M) for what amounted to 11 cargoes.

The cost to Japan of Russian deliveries for all of 2022 was 82.4 percent higher than in the previous year with the bill from the Russians coming to 677.5Bln yen ($5.24Bln).

Japan continues its deliveries of LNG from the Russian Far East plant at Sakhalin Island even after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as energy security outweighed the Western-led imposition of sanctions against Russia on the energy and financial fronts.

The balance of Japan's LNG imports in January amounted to 3.86MT in the form of deliveries from the country’s largest supplier Australia, some spot cargoes and small volumes from Africa.

In its energy mix in 2022, Japan has continued to delay more nuclear power re-starts meaning that volumes of LNG and coal purchases remain high.

Since the Fukushima disaster, only 10 reactors have been given the go-ahead to go back into operation compared with the 54 that were online in 2011 and which supplied around 30 percent of Japan’s energy needs.

A further 21 reactors have been decommissioned since 2011 and will never be re-started.

Feb 1 (LNGJ) - Tokyo Gas, the utility and LNG importer, reported a more than 72 percent increase in nine-month revenues from natural gas sales totalling 1.55 trillion yen ($11.9Bln) compared with 907.84 billion yen ($6.9Bln) in the same period of the previous year.

   The utility said nine-month operating profit rose more than four-fold to 235.7Bln yen ($1.8Bln) versus 52.3Bln yen ($409M) in the prior-year period. Natural gas accounts for 60 percent of the business with other income coming from electricity sales as well as other energy and overseas activities.

JERA Co. Inc., the largest Japanese LNG importer, has resumed operations at the gas-fired Anegasaki Thermal Power Station located on the eastern side of Tokyo Bay and currently under a long-term planned shutdown scheduled for February 2023.

JERA explained that that Unit 5 facility at the station was scheduled to resume operations on October 24 to supply auxiliary steam for the restart of Unit 6 at the Anegasaki power plant.

“Because the Unit had deteriorated over time and its utilization rate had declined, the Unit has been in a long-term planned shutdown since April 2021,” said JERA.

However, discussions at the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry's electricity and gas policy committee led to an agreement for a re-start to help underpin Japan’s energy security.

“JERA has lifted the Unit’s long-term planned shutdown and will operate it as part of measures to provide additional power supply capacity for this winter,” added JERA.

The utility company added that it would “make every effort” in cooperation with related parties to ensure a stable supply of energy to the plant and at other power facilities.

The 600-megawatts Anegasaki plant is a conventional gas plant and in operation using LNG as fuel since 1979.

The decision to shut the plant was taken in April 2021 before the current energy crisis deepened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

JERA is the largest corporate LNG buyer in the world with annual volumes of around 35 million tonnes and controls a fleet of around 20 LNG carriers.

Additionally, it is Japan’s biggest fossil-fuel generator being owned jointly by Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Chubu Electric, the two largest power companies.

The company currently operates and provides fuel for a total of 26 power plants in Japan and imports LNG into 11 of Japan’s network of 37 terminals.

July 24 (LNGJ) - Novatek, the Russian natural gas company and operator of the Yamal LNG plant in northern Siberia, said its power and gas subsidiary shipped the first cargo of LNG from the Yamal facility to Japan eastbound via the Northern Sea Route.

   Novatek said the cargo was delivered by the 172,000 cubic metres capacity LNG carrier “Vladimir Rusanov” under a spot contract and unloaded at the Ohgishima import terminal at Tokyo Bay in Japan. “This LNG cargo is the company’s first successful experience of unloading an Arc-7 ice-class LNG tanker at a Japanese port,” said the Russian company.

Japan has only two weeks of LNG reserves in storage as the nation entered a state of emergency a week ago because of the coronavirus and this has coincided with cutbacks in its current limited nuclear power generation capacity.

Tokyo Gas, the Japanese utility and leading liquefied natural gas importer, said deregulation of the industry in Japan had been a big success and LNG had a great future as the nation was set to celebrate 50 years of using the fuel in 2019.