Japan continues to boost its liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and they rose for the fourth consecutive month in August.
The country received 6.29 million tonnes of LNG last month, up 7.8 percent when compared to the same month last year, according to the provisional data released by the country’s Ministry of Finance.
Compared to the previous month when Japan took 6.18 million tonnes, LNG imports rose by 1.7 percent.
Japan paid about $3.32 billion for LNG supplies in August, a rise of 89.3 percent year-on-year.
State-run Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp (JOGMEC) said earlier this month it could not provide spot LNG price data for August due to a lack of spot transactions.
Looking at LNG shipments in August, deliveries from Asia from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia increased by 18.5 percent to 1.46 million tonnes, the ministry’s data shows.
Middle East LNG shipments from countries like Qatar increased by 25.2 percent to 1.25 million tonnes.
Additionally, shipments from Russia dropped 75.7 percent to 144,000 tonnes while US deliveries surged 99.4 percent to 541,000 tonnes.
Japan is still the world’s largest LNG importer and the country took 74.4 million tonnes of LNG last year.
However, China is expected to overtake Japan this year. China imported 45.25 million tonnes while Japan received about 45.05 million tonnes in the January-July period.
China is yet to release official import data for August.