After Oil, China to Shake Up LNG Market in 2025?
By Salman Khan
China has made heavy imports of oil in March this year to shake up the global oil market. It stops now buying U.S LNG that is going to shake up the LNG market in 2025 as well.
Amid tug of tariff war, China has stopped buying LNG from the United States and has not imported a single drop of liquefied natural gas (LNG) since early February.
This has happened all due to tug of tariff war between the U.S and the Trump administration, the two biggest economies in the world.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States had exported approximately 197.3 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of LNG to China in 2024.
If we take the total volume of US LNG imports by China, the average size of an LNG cargo amounts to around 3.5 Bcf, equating to roughly 56 cargoes for the year.
China received its last ship of LNG from the United States on February 6, 2025, which came from Corpus Christi, Texas, and landed in Fujian province. Since that time, there has not been any import of US LNG by China due to the tough tariff rates imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese products.Azerbaijan Asks Pakistan to Resume LNG Supplies
What’s Really Going On?
During tug of tariff war, China retaliated and slapped tariffs on U.S. energy products, among other things,s which made American LNG more expensive and competitive in the global market.
So, Chinese LNG importers stayed away from paying the extra costs to US exporters and flipping their U.S. cargoes to other buyers, mostly in Europe. In an actual sense, the Chinese are buying US LNG in Europe and reselling it to dodge the tariffs.
New U.S. LNG Deals?
Industry insiders and experts are speculating that this shift of Chinese LNG importers could have lasting effects, and they believe that Chinese buyers would never buy American LNG now due to the trade tariff war. Anne-Sophie Corbeau from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy said he does not think that Chinese LNG importers would now enter into any new US LNG contracts.
They believed that Chinese energy companies would now be looking towards some new long-term LNG contracts from other countries like the Middle East and the Asia Pacific.
China’s LNG Demand Is Cooling Off Too
There is another issue as well! The demand for LNG has started shrinking in China this year due to well-stocked winter inventories,
Therefore, the country does not need much LNG now. In fact, 2025 might have marked the first year since 2022 that China has witnessed an actual drop in LNG imports, according to BloombergNEF.
Why It Matters?
Here is the big takeaway for the LNG market. US companies will be facing a tough situation in entering into long-term LNG contracts if China continues to steer clear of U.S. LNG.
US firms will need to find new LNG buyers to fund new export projects. So, here is a game that could shake up the whole LNG game for the coming years.
Earlier, China had shaken up the oil market by flooding oil imports, and now it could shake up the LNG market as well by staying away from US LNG traders.
