China's LNG plants' capacity utilization rates showed an uptrend during the week ended February 29, due to the resumption of work and production after the Chinese New Year holiday amidst recovering downstream demand, as well as rising feed gas supply , according to OilChem.
The average capacity utilization rates of domestic LNG plants stood at 53.27% by the week ended February 29, an increase of 5.94 percentage points from the week ended February 9, data from OilChem showed. The total production capacity increased 2 million cubic meters per day to 176.1 million cubic meters per day, due to the commissioning of Erdos Ronghong Shengrui Energy, which was located in North China's Inner Mongolia.
Those plants had a combined LNG production of 93.8 million cubic meters per day during the same period, up 17.07% from 80.12 million cubic meters per day that ended February 9, the data showed.
The rise was attributed to the production resumption of LNG plants that cut or shut the production on sluggish sales during the Chinese New Year holiday, together with improving downstream demand after the holiday.
In addition, due to sufficient PNG supply as the temperature goes up, the supply of natural gas to LNG plants in the west part of China rose 2.4 million cubic meters to 12 million cubic meters in the fourth week of February, with the daily average rising by 2.11 million cubic meters, thus propelling the increase in capacity utilization rates.
Looking ahead, with the end of the heating season in mid-March, PNG will be abundant in supply, and LNG plants in North China and Southwest China will also have more feed gas supplies, which will lift the domestic LNG plants' capacity utilization rates to 60%.
China LNG Plants' Production and Capacity Utilization Rate
Source: OilChem
Written by Sunny Fang, fss@oilchem.net
Edited by Aggie Hu, huchenying@mysteel.com