Production resumption promotes LNG plants' capacity utilization rates
The average capacity utilization rate of domestic LNG plants stood at 48.93% by the week ended January 18, a slight increase of 0.23 percentage points from the prior week, against the total production capacity of 174.1 million cubic meters per day, data from OilChem showed.
Those plants had a combined LNG production of 596.29 million cubic meters during the same period, up 0.61% from a week ago, the data showed.
The rise was attributed to the production resumption of some plants due to increasing feed gas supply, as PertroChina offered 77 million cubic meters of natural gas to West China LNG plants over January 14-21 via auction, with a daily average of 11 million cubic meters, an increase of 2.8 million cubic meters per day compared to the prior week.
The volume of natural gas sold via auction was believed to have signaled increasing natural gas supply in the market and encouraged LNG plants to resume or ramp up the production, market sources noted.
Looking ahead, a strong cold wave swept through most of China over January 20-23, which has driven up the city gas demand again and make the PNG supply tight. With that, the natural gas supply to West China LNG plants for auction will be 82 million cubic meters for delivery over January 21-31, with a daily average of 8.2 million cubic meters, a decrease of 2.8 million cubic meters per day compared to the prior week.
Therefore, some LNG plants will cut the production, and OilChem expects that the capacity utilization rate of domestic LNG plants will decline in the later stage.
China LNG Plants' Production and Capacity Utilization Rate
Source: OilChem
China LNG Plants' Capacity Utilization Rate Outlook
Source: OilChem
Written by Sunny Fang, fss@oilchem.net
Edited by Aggie Hu, huchenying@mysteel.com
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