China's LNG plants' capacity utilization rates continued to fall during the week ended February 1, due to a series of factors including routine maintenance, and production suspention on feed gas supply shortage, and extending production suspension, according to OilChem.
The average capacity utilization rates of domestic LNG plants stood at 46.76% by the week ended February 1, a decrease of 1.65 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 569.88 million cubic meters during the same period, down 3.41% from a week ago, the data showed.
Separately, some COG-based LNG plants in Shandong and Henan provinces took routine maintenance, Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum Yanchuan Complex suspened the production due to tight feed gas supply related to cold weather, and the production cut or shutdown of many plants in Hubei and Shanxi in the prior week weighed down the operation last week.
Looking ahead, the daily average natural gas supply to LNG plants will be 8.25 million cubic meters for delivery over January 31-February 7, just a slight increase of 0.05 million cubic meters per day compared to the prior week, primarily due to the lack of market confidence.
In addition, the average temperature through most of China will be 1-3 degrees centigrade lower than normal, which will drive up city gas demand again and may tighten feed gas supply in Hubei Province. And Sichuan Dazhou Huixin Energy will take temporary maintenance for 7 days.
Taken together, OilChem expects that the capacity utilization rates of domestic LNG plants will decline further 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