TOKYO: Japan’s LNG imports fell 3.8% from a year ago in February to 7.4 million mt, with supplies from Russia plunging 54% year on year following an outage at the Sakhalin LNG plant, data released Wednesday by the Ministry of Finance showed.
The country’s Russian imports fell to 364,452 mt last month, down by 432,856 mt or about seven cargoes from a year earlier. A force majeure was declared January 28 following a power outage at Russia’s Sakhalin-2 LNG export plant, which reduced LNG production at the two-train facility to 50%, Platts previously reported.
The plant recovered to full production on March 2, according to traders. Meanwhile, imports from Indonesia more than doubled from a year ago to 670,005 mt in February. Japan also received a 63,334-mt spot cargo from France in February, at a cost of $379.99/mt, or $7.307/MMBtu.
The Lobito loaded a cargo from France’s Fos-sur-Mer on February 13 and delivered it to the Higashi Ohgishima LNG terminal, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., on March 14, according to Platts trade flow software cFlow.
Japan also received a 63,297-mt cargo from Equatorial Guinea at a cost of $339.76/mt, or $6.534/MMBtu, one of the lowest prices the country paid for LNG cargoes in February. Equatorial Guinea has shipped only one cargo to Japan so far this year, which was loaded on LNG vessel Clear Vision on February 10 and arrived at the Higashi Ohgishima terminal on March 9.
Australia sent 1.64 million mt of LNG to Japan in February, up 13.4% from a year earlier — making it the largest LNG supplier to Japan in the month. Australia’s volume accounted for about 22% of Japan’s overall LNG imports last month.
Malaysia and Qatar came in second and third, shipping 1.46 million mt and 1.12 million mt, respectively. The Japan Customs Cleared crude oil price was at $30.364/b in February, down 38.6% from a year earlier and down 18% from January. Some of Japan’s long-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.
