China’s LNG imports could reach 110b cubic metres by 2025: CNPC

SHANGHAI, Apr 03 (Reuters): China's imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) could reach 110 billion cubic meters, or about 80 million tonnes a year, by 2025, a senior executive from China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) said on Wednesday.

The growth will be driven by a stringent environmental policy and an accelerated restructuring of the country's energy mix, among other factors, Ling Xiao told the LNG2019 conference in Shanghai.

China's LNG imports last year were about 54 million tonnes. CNPC accounts for about 60 per cent of China's overall gas imports and 70 per cent of domestic production, Ling said.

"LNG price will become one of the decisive factors for the amount of LNG imports," he also said in his presentation.

And that will become even more important with the startup of a gas pipeline between China and Russia - expected later this year - that could threaten LNG imports, he said.

"LNG import prices are not competitive with pipeline gas now, and the opening of the Russia pipeline will pose further threat to LNG imports," he said.

"We are hoping for cheaper and shorter term LNG contracts and only in that way can LNG be truly competitive."

Deliveries of gas to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline were due to begin at the end of December 2019, but the project is only expected to reach full capacity in 2025.

Another report adds: Liquefied natural gas (LNG) will become a big part of China-US trade once tensions are properly resolved between the two countries, a senior executive from China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) said on Wednesday.

LNG will also continue to dominate China's natural gas imports, already accounting for 60 per cent of its gas imports last year, said CNOOC Vice President Li Hui on the sidelines of the LNG2019 conference in Shanghai.

CNOOC is China's largest investor in LNG facilities and its largest buyer of the super-chilled fuel.

China has since 2017 become the world's second-largest LNG buyer after Japan as gas demand surges under a government push to switch users from coal to cleaner burning gas.