China Dominates Largest Liquefied Natural Gas Import in 2019

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The largest liquefied natural gas or LNG will be dominated by China in the next year. It is increasing as the energy consumption increases in China as the world’s most populous nation. IEA Market Report Series: 2018 estimates China's LNG consumption will continue to increase in the coming years.

The report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) with Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange said that by 2023, China’s LNG import would reach 171 billion cubic meters.

China and India are the countries with a very rapid increase in LNG consumption. Currently, China is in the second place after taking over South Korea as an importer of LNG, the IEA report quoted by People’s Daily on Saturday.

Former Deputy Director of National Energy Agency of China (NEA) Zhang Yuqing said that his administration policy will clearly use LNG as the main raw material of energy.

“The energy structure must be rapidly accelerated with clean and low carbon energy system, and China plans to use LNG up to 10 percent of its total consumption by 2020,” he said.

According to him, as energy demand increases, China’s main focus will be to maintain the stability of gas and price resources while maintaining the competitiveness of alternative fuels. The high demand for China’s LNG gas import opens opportunities for exporter from Indonesia as China listed in the top 10 destination countries for Indonesia’s oil and gas exports.

ANTARA