China-bound LNG tankers increase to 3-month high

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

30 Jun 2009

The number of liquefied natural gas tankers sailing to China climbed fourfold in the past week, suggesting the country's terminals will receive the most deliveries of the fuel since March, ship-tracking data show. Four carriers, LNG Dream, Northwest Swift, Tangguh Towuti and Arctic Spirit, are bound for Chinese facilities, according to AISLive data on Bloomberg. A week ago there was one. The first two appear to be arriving from Australia and the second two from Indonesia and Malaysia, respectively, according to the signals.
Japan, the world's biggest buyer of LNG, is to receive 20 LNG tankers, down from 22 last week. Shipments to the Atlantic basin climbed to seven from six while U.S. arrivals climbed to two from zero.
China is stockpiling items including crude oil and frozen pork. Its inventories of commodities including copper and iron ore have also risen this year. Today's count of four carriers is the most since March 6, when the same number of vessels indicated they were bound for Chinese ports, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Signals today were captured from 151 vessels, 2 fewer than on June 12. That's 49 percent of the global fleet of 310 LNG carriers.

Source: Bloomberg