Almost 50 liquefied natural gas carriers used by Qatar to export the superchilled fuel are idled in Asia, Bloomberg has reported, citing data from Kpler. All the vessels are empty, the data shows.
The LNG carriers are accumulated in a handful of locations, including West India, Sri Lanka, close to the Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia, and offshore Singapore.
LNG carriers typically have a capacity of 170,000 cu m of natural gas, which translates into 72,000 tons of liquefied gas. The Bloomberg report references “more than four dozen” vessels being idled across Asia, meaning a loss of at least 3.456 million tons of LNG in carrier capacity.
Bloomberg notes that globally, there are about 800 LNG carriers in operation. This number is considered insufficient for projected LNG demand, analysts warned before the latest Middle Eastern war. With Qatar’s LNG production suspended as a result of the war, tanker supply should be a less major issue.
Amid the disruption in global LNG trade, China has been reselling record amounts of liquefied gas to other Asian countries, taking advantage of its solid stockpiles and lukewarm demand. In March alone, China resold up to 10 cargoes of LNG—a record-high for any month ever, according to data from energy analytics firms Vortexa, Kpler, and ICIS, as cited by Reuters last week.
Yet the events in the Middle East have started to sap demand for liquefied gas across Asia, as supply tightness pushes prices higher, helped by competition from Europe. Imports of liquefied natural gas into Asian countries fell last month by the sharpest rate since 2020, when pandemic lockdowns decimated energy demand. The total for the month stood at 20.6 million tons, according to Bloomberg, which represented an annual drop of 8.6%. It was the sharpest demand drop since December 2020.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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