reduce\u00a0<\/a>LNG shipments or defer them for later. A new wave of LNG projects has been cast in doubt by plunging gas prices.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The group hasn\u2019t yet quantified the impact it expects on the industry. The following three charts show highlights of the industry\u2019s expansion last year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While the number of importing countries remained unchanged at 42, Europe stood out with a 76% increase in net purchases from a year earlier, helping absorb the glut.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Asia remained the leading consuming region, though its share of total imports fell to 69% from 76% in 2018. Shipments into all countries except the established markets of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan rose, though China\u2019s growth slowed to 14% from 38% a year earlier.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The U.S. was the fastest-growing producer and Europe became its main market, taking 38% of its exports. Russia expanded its output with the Yamal LNG plant.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The chart below shows the U.S. moving to become the third-biggest exporter, while Qatar maintained its crown with a slight edge over Australia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
U.S. supply helped further develop LNG trade. The nation became the biggest supplier of flexible fuel, accounting for a fifth of spot and short-term volumes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Contracts with duration of less than four years accounted for 34% of total imports, up from 32% in 2018, GIIGNL said. Actual spot volumes, delivered within three months from a deal date, also marginally increased.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There were 601 LNG tankers as of the end of 2019, a net increase of 38 from a year earlier. The average spot charter rate for a 160,000 cubic meter vessel fell more than 20% in 2019 to $69,337 a day.<\/p>\n
gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LNG imports surged 13% to 354.7 million tons after production surged from new plants in the U.S., Russia and Australia, the French-based group known as GIIGNL said in an annual report. More projects to manufacture the fuel were approved in 2019, guaranteeing supply will keep rising. \u201c2019 was a record year for the LNG industry, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3636,1142,1277,523,2647,2258,2800],"class_list":["post-7683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-deliveries","tag-heads","tag-industry","tag-lng","tag-record","tag-slump","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/7684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}