Japan’s imports of liquefied natural gas dropped 11.3 percent in July, as compared to the same month a year ago, preliminary data from the Ministry of Finance reveals.
The world’s largest buyer of the chilled gas imported 6.95 million tonnes of LNG in July.
Japan paid 395,630 million yen for LNG imports in July, down 40.7 percent on year, according to the data.
LNG use by Japan’s ten independent regional electric power companies dropped 7.1 percent to 4.69 million mt in July, FEPC data showed.
The 10 utilities purchased 4.68 million mt of LNG in July, down 6.4 percent from the same month last year.
Total electricity generated and purchased across the ten companies in July declined by 2.4 percent from a year earlier to 78.00 billion kWh, due principally to decreased cooling demands caused by relatively lower temperatures in July than the previous year, FEPC said.
1 Japanese yen = 0.008048 U.S. dollars
LNG World News Staff; Image: Osaka Gas