Since the start of the Middle East war, China has been reselling record volumes of LNG to other Asian buyers as its own demand has been tepid and stocks and gas supplies sufficient.
In March alone, China resold up to 10 cargoes of LNG—a record-high for any month ever, according to data from energy analytics firms Vortexa, Kpler, and ICIS cited by Reuters.
Year to date, China has also resold record volumes of LNG, an estimated 1.31 million tons, shipped to South Korea, Thailand, Japan, India, and the Philippines, per data from Kpler. This is the highest on record, too, and more than all volumes Chinese companies resold for the entire 2025 or 2023.
China has some buffer to allow itself not to spend too much on costly LNG imports amid the global LNG crunch due to the de facto closed Strait of Hormuz and the outage at Qatar’s LNG complex hit by Iranian missiles.
China’s LNG storage was estimated by Kpler at about 51% by end-March, and this buffer allows Beijing to draw on existing inventories.
In addition, China has boosted domestic gas supply and supply via pipeline from Russia, further easing the need to tap the spot LNG market, where prices hit a three-year high and have rallied by more than 80% since the war in the Middle East began.
The surging LNG prices led to the lowest monthly LNG imports into China in eight years as Qatari and UAE supply is off the market, resulting in huge price spikes.
China was on track to import about 3.7 million tons of LNG in March, per tanker-tracking data by Kpler cited by Bloomberg. That would be the lowest monthly import level in the world’s top LNG importer since the spring of 2018, as well as a 25% slump compared to March 2025, according to Bloomberg data and analysis.
With a somewhat adequate buffer to withstand the current LNG market turmoil, China is unlikely to touch the expensive spot supply, analysts say.
“China will not enter the market and fight for cargoes with other countries at all,” ICIS analyst Wang Yuanda told Reuters.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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