Japan's LNG Imports in Jan Rose 1.2% From DEC to 8.18 Million Mt,Fell 0.8% Year on Year

Japan's LNG imports in January rose 1.2% from December to 8.18 million mt but fell 0.8% year on year, data released Thursday by the Ministry of Finance showed.

Australia was the largest supplier with 1.73 million mt of LNG, up 10.4% year on year and 2% from December. Qatar hiked its LNG shipments to Japan by 23.6% from a year ago to 1.72 million mt, which was up 8.7% from December.

Malaysia came in third with 1.3 million mt, about the same volume as December but down 3.5% from January 2013.

Spot cargoes were bought by Japan from Algeria at $18.77/MMBtu and from Norway at $19.01/MMBtu. Platts JKM for January averaged $18.96/MMBtu over November 18-December 13 last year.

Japan city gas sales from utilities hit a record 4 billion cubic meters in January on higher demand from industry users, the Japan Gas Association said on Thursday. Driving the demand was an increasing number of new users and longer operation hours at industrial facilities, it added. January is also in the middle of Japn's peak heating demand season.

Japan's LNG import price averaged $861.46/mt ($16.57/MMBtu) in January, up 1.8% year on year and 3% month on month.

Meanwhile, preliminary data released Thursday by the finance ministry showed that the January Japan Customs Cleared crude oil price was $113.460/barrel, up 1.4% from a year earlier and 1.2% from November.

Some of Japan's term LNG contracts are linked to the JCC crude price but with a lag of a few months, so fluctuations in oil prices typically take some time to be reflected in LNG prices.