Several of China’s 17 facilities were operating well above nameplate capacity as the winter chill set in towards the end of the year, while the average utilisation rate for the countrywide complement of terminals was 66%, marking their busiest ever year.

This stands in stark contrast to the situation in 2015 when, in the face of the high gas prices, Chinese LNG imports, at 19.6M tonnes, fell by 1% year-on-year. Many of China’s new LNG terminals coming onstream in 2015 remained virtually idle throughout the year.

Northern Powerhouse

The current strong Chinese demand for LNG imports, and natural gas in general, is being driven by the government’s clean environment programme of substituting gas for coal as a home heating fuel. So far, 18 provinces have implemented coal-to-gas conversion schemes, including the energy-intensive northern provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi and Hebei.

The four LNG import terminals serving the northern part of the country – Dalian, Caofeidian Tangshan, Qingdao and Tianjin – have been particularly busy over the past year.

The Qingdao terminal, which is operated by Sinopec, received 4.6M tonnes of LNG in 2017, 75% up on the previous year and well above the facility’s nameplate regasification capacity of 3 million tonnes per annum (mta).

PetroChina has reported that its 3.5 mta Tangshan terminal has received 121 shipments totalling 10.1M tonnes since the facility opened in November 2013, and that the annual throughput in 2017 was by far the greatest.

Unlike the other three baseload regasification facilities, CNOOC’s Tianjin terminal is a hybrid installation that uses two 30,000 m3 shore storage tanks, eight road tanker loading bays and either a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) or a floating storage unit (FSU) to handle LNG flows.

The FSRU utilised at Tianjin, GDF Suez Cape Ann, has the capacity to regasify up to 2.2 mta of LNG but only small volumes have ever been processed in this way. CNOOC replaced the FSRU with an FSU at Tianjin for most of 2017 and this vessel received 1.8M tonnes during the year, an 88% jump on 2016 levels.

The LNG was pumped to the shore tanks as space became available and then loaded into cryogenic road tankers for distribution to final customers. CNOOC is currently making use of both GDF Suez Cape Ann and an FSU to maximise cargo throughputs.

Because the Tianjin terminal was hooked up to the PetroChina pipeline serving the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in December 2017, the FSRU’s cargo regasification capabilities are likely to be called upon more than previously required during the current charter period.

Eastern Promise

China’s eastern provinces are served by five LNG import terminals – Rudong, Qidong, Shanghai, Wuhaogou and Ningbo.

PetroChina’s Rudong installation received 57 shipments and 4.4M tonnes of LNG in 2017. The volume was within nameplate capacity as the commissioning of a new 200,000 m3 storage tank in November 2016 helped boost LNG-handling capability at the terminal from 3.5 to 6.5 mta.

CNOOC’s Ningbo terminal received 3.6M tonnes in 2017, up 66% on the previous year and 20% above its nameplate capacity.

Commissioned in June 2017, Guanghui Energy’s 0.6 mta Qidong terminal was one of two new Chinese terminals opened last year. Nine cargoes were discharged at the facility during the second half of the year.

In recent weeks CNOOC has embarked on an expansion project at its Shanghai terminal which will double capacity, from 3 to 6 mta, by 2020. Two new 200,000 m3 storage tanks and road tanker loading bays are being added.

Southern Provinces

China’s greatest concentration of LNG receiving facilities is in the southern provinces, including in the Pearl River Delta region. The eight-terminal complement is comprised of Fujian, Yuedong, Dapeng, Dongguan, Zhuhai, Beihai, Hainan and Haikou. Dongguan and Haikou, like Qidong and Wuhaogou, are small-scale facilities.

The second new Chinese terminal to commence operations in 2017, CNOOC’s Yuedong installation received 550,000 tonnes of cargo since its April commissioning. Yuedong became the seventh of China’s 17 terminals to be inaugurated by a Qatargas cargo when the 210,000 m3 Q-flex vessel Al Kharaitiyat discharged the facility’s first shipment.

CNOOC’s Zhuhai terminal is another facility that received more LNG than its nameplate capacity in 2017, the 4M tonnes discharged being 14% above its rated throughput. Australia, the leading supplier of LNG to China over the past two years, provided 50% of the installation’s cargoes.

Keep On Trucking

China has followed the example of Everett in the US port of Boston, the first LNG import terminal with road tanker loading bays and extrapolated on that commitment by setting new records in tank truck sendouts.

China is making up for its comparative lack of natural gas pipeline and storage infrastructure through a fleet of 10,000 LNG road tankers and 40-foot ISO tank containers. While many of these units distribute shipments from China’s small-scale domestic liquefaction plants, the majority load at the country’s LNG import terminals.

Tianjin teminal’s road loading bays are country’s busiest, with an average of 380 laden road tankers per day dispatched from the terminal gates this winter.

Ningbo is the second busiest for tank truck loadings, with 280 per day, Fujian 200, Zhuhai 160, Qingdao 125, Beihai 120, Yuedong and Qidong 90, Dongguan 80, Tangshan, 70, Dalian 40, Rudong 25 and Dapeng 20.

While the majority of road tanker deliveries are to customers within 500 km of the liquefaction plant or import terminal, the LNG terminals in the southern part of the country have been assisting in meeting the needs of consumers in the north recently by dispatching tank trucks and ISO tanks on long-distance journeys.

CNOOC has leased 100 road tankers for loading at its southern terminals and one of the more notable operations was a December 2017 Zhuhai consignment to Weifang, 2,000 km away. Early this year Sinopec dispatched a truckload of LNG from its Beihai terminal to Zibo in Shandong province, a drive of three days.

In 2018 China will bring three new LNG import terminals into service, increasing the country’s complement to 20. The first of these – Sinopec’s new shore-based Tianjin terminal in the north – has been commissioned in the past few days. The other two are ENN’s Zhoushan facility in the east and CNOOC’s Shenzhen Deifu installation in the Pearl River Delta.

Not only are nationwide LNG imports expected to continue to climb strongly over the next few years, but also the fleet of LNG road tankers and ISO tanks required for domestic distribution services. Vehicle manufacturers predict that the annual production of such units could hover around the 2,500 mark through to at least 2020.

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