Asian market of LNG: growth continues

The Asian region has traditionally been the largest global market for sale of liquefied natural gas (LNG). For example, according to the International Group of LNG importers (GIIGNL), approximately 75 % of the world LNG purchases fall on the countries of the Asia- Pacific region. Moreover, a number of the countries (Japan, South Korea, etc.) fully cover domestic demand for gas due to LNG. At the same time, the Asian region is one of the key suppliers of LNG to world markets. In particular, by results of 2013 Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia provided about 30% of the global LNG supply (for comparison, the share of the Middle East is about 42 %).

The main factors that cause the high demand for LNG in Asia include:

- absence of own commercial natural gas reserves in most countries of the region with the growing domestic demand for energy sources;

- geographic distance from the major regions of the global production of natural gas (the Middle East, Russia, etc.), extremely difficult logistics and economics of potential pipeline deliveries.

According to GIIGNL, by results of 2013 the total demand for LNG in the Asian region grew by 7.7 million tons in annual terms, primarily due to strong growth in consumption in China and South Korea.