Japan’s yearly LNG imports continued to decline last year dropping 3.7 percent when compared to the year before that also marked a drop.
The world’s largest importer of LNG received 74.46 million tonnes of the fuel in 2020, according to the provisional data released by the country’s Ministry of Finance.
On the other side, December imports increased 13.4 percent to hit last year’s highest monthly volume of 7.72 million tonnes due to a cold snap, the data shows.
Japan paid about $31 billion for the January-December imports. This sum marks a decline of 26 percent when compared to the year before.
Looking at last year’s LNG shipments, deliveries from Asia from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia declined by 5.9 percent to 16.81 million tonnes, the ministry’s data shows.
Middle East LNG shipments from sources like Qatar dipped by 11.4 percent to 12.21 million tonnes.
Additionally, shipments from Russia dropped 4 percent to 6.14 million tonnes while US deliveries increased 27.8 percent to 4.72 million tonnes.
Japan remains the top LNG importer but this could change this year as China continues to boost imports of the fuel and the country imported 67.13 million tonnes in 2020. This is about 7.33 million tonnes behind Japan.