China imported 1.73 million mt of natural gas via pipelines in November, up 8.2% year on year, data released by the General Administration of Customs showed Tuesday.
Customs data records natural gas trade data in mt, similar to LNG imports. The volume works out to about 2.4 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas imported last month.
Imports from Turkmenistan fell 5.1% year on year to 1.52 million mt in November, while Uzbekistan volumes totaled 150,228 mt.
Myanmar pipeline imports totaled 41,263 mt, the highest volume since transmission via the Myanmar-China pipeline started in early August.
China's current gas imports from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are transported via the Central Asia-China gas pipeline network that links with state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.'s Second West-East Pipeline in western Xinjiang province.
Gas imports from Kazakhstan are sent via a pipeline owned by private company Xinjiang Guanghui Energy.
Coupled with total LNG imports of 1.35 million mt, China's total gas and LNG imports rose 14.8% year on year to 3.09 million mt in November, or roughly 4.26 billion cu m.
Subtracting gas exports of about 210 million cu m to Macau and Hong Kong and including domestic production of 10 billion cu m, China's apparent demand for gas -- excluding any volumes held in storage -- rose 6% year on year to 14.06 billion cu m in November, according to Platts calculations. This is the slowest growth since January this year.
China's demand for natural gas peaks in the fourth quarter and the first quarter of the following year because of higher winter consumption. However, the spike in gas demand supply in November was mainly from LNG imports, which surged 24.5% year on year, as three new import terminals started operations in the last few months.
Over January to November, total gas imports -- including LNG volumes of 15.59 million mt -- totaled 33.82 million mt, up 30.3% year on year. Taking into account domestic output of 102.02 billion cu m and exports totaling 2.19 billion cu m, apparent demand for gas over January-November was 146.5 billion cu m, up 13% year on year.