Japan’s liquefied natural gas imports continued to rise in February and they increased for the third month in a row on high winter demand.
The world’s largest importer of LNG received 8.06 million tonnes of chilled fuel last month, a rise of 21.5 percent year-on-year, according to the provisional data released by the country’s Ministry of Finance.
To remind, December imports increased 13.4 percent to hit last year’s highest monthly volume of 7.72 million tonnes due to a cold snap while January imports rose 7.3 percent, reaching almost the same quantity as this month.
Furthermore, prices increased in February and LNG imports cost Japan about $3.74 billion. This marked a rise of 15.9 percent.
Looking at last month’s LNG shipments, deliveries from Asia from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia declined by 17.6 percent to 1.95 million tonnes, the ministry’s data shows.
Middle East LNG shipments from sources like Qatar dropped by 8.7 percent to 1.20 million tonnes.
Additionally, shipments from Russia increased 20.2 percent to 718,000 tonnes while US deliveries doubled to 948,000 tonnes.