China will this year overtake Japan as the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas, ICIS Edge, a service of market intelligence provider ICIS, said this week, as quoted by Reuters. The forecast is based on China’s rapid economic recovery, its efforts to reduce pollution, and the cold start of the year. China is already catching up with Japan in terms of LNG imports: Japan imported 76.32 million tons of LNG between June 2020 and May this year. China’s imports hit 76.27 million tons during the same period. These import figures compare with demand forecasts of 75.2 million tons for Japan from ICIS and a whopping 81.2 million tons for China. Because of its growing appetite for liquefied natural gas, which it is substituting for much more polluting coal to generate electricity, China will lead the global capacity expansion in regasification facilities. These are installed at import terminals to […]