Japan’s monthly LNG imports declined again in October following a slight rise in the month before.
The world’s largest importer of LNG received 5.94 million tonnes of the fuel last month, according to the provisional data released by the country’s Ministry of Finance.
This is down 5.7 percent from a year earlier and represents the eight monthly decline in volumes this year.
On the other side, coal imports for power generation increased 1.2 percent to 9.26 million tonnes.
Furthermore, prices continued to decline and October LNG imports cost Japan about $1.81 billion. This marked a decline of 42.7 percent when compared to the same month last year.
Looking at last month’s LNG shipments, deliveries from Asia from countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia declined by 19.3 percent to 1.11 million tonnes, the ministry’s data shows.
Middle East LNG shipments from sources like Qatar rose by 12.2 percent to 1.18 million tonnes.
Additionally, shipments from Russia dropped 0.5 percent to 529,000 tonnes while US deliveries nosedived 66.4 percent to 199,000 tonnes.