The energy industry overestimated just how much natural gas China needs, and global oil-and-gas companies risk paying a heavy price. When China’s economy hummed along a few years ago, energy companies from Australia to Canada bet its demand for natural gas would grow fast. They spent billions of dollars on promising fields, with plans to freeze the gas into liquid, called LNG, and load it on tankers to sell to energy-starved Asian buyers at a premium. China was “always seen as the kind of wonder market that was going to grow and need so much LNG,” said Howard Rogers of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and a former gas executive at BP BP 2.98 % PLC. “People got somewhat carried away.” Recent data paints a grimmer picture. Chinese LNG imports are down 3.5% this year, compared with a 10% rise in 2014. Total gas consumption grew about 2% […]