Winter cold in China could boost the country’s imports of liquefied gas, boosting international spot market prices, Bloomberg has reported, citing equally cold weather in Europe, another major LNG consumer.
The report cited a weather forecast from the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts as predicting temperatures about 6 C lower than average in parts of China this week, expecting this development to lead to a hike in LNG imports.
China booked 12 consecutive months of declining imports of liquefied natural gas between December 2024 and November 2025, when imports rebounded on stronger seasonally driven demand. The total for November 2025 hit 7.17 million tons, Kpler reported in December, forecasting a further hike in December. LNG imports from Russia jumped twofold in November, to a record high of 1.6 million tons.
In 2024, China saw a surge in LNG and pipeline gas imports as it sought to fill its storage caverns. Over just the first half of the year, total natural gas imports saw an annual increase of 14.3%, reaching 64.65 million tons. After the rush to fill storage, imports of natural gas weakened as facilities were full at capacity.
Meanwhile, however, Chinese energy companies considerably boosted local natural gas production as part of efforts to reduce the country’s reliance on energy imports. In November last year, China produced 22.1 billion cu m, which was a 7.1% increase on the year, Kpler reported in December, citing official production data.
The increase was driven by “faster-than-expected shale gas ramp-ups in the Sichuan Basin.” Based on that data, the energy analytics firm expects China’s total for 2025 to reach 263 billion cu m, rising to 278.5 billion cu m this year, again thanks to growing shale gas production in the Sichuan and Shanxi basins. This, however, may not be enough to meet the seasonal surge in demand for heating.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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