China imported 1.83 million mt of natural gas via pipelines in October, up 27.3% year on year, data released by the General Administration of Customs Friday showed.
Customs data records natural gas trade data in mt, similar to LNG imports. The volume works out to about 2.53 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas imported last month.
Turkmenistan gas imports rose 18.2% year on year to 1.63 million mt during the month, while Uzbekistan volumes jumped 210.4% year on year to 178,148 mt. Kazakhstan gas imports totaled 21,652 mt during the month.
China's current gas imports from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are transported via the Central Asia-China gas pipeline network that links with state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.'s Second West-East Pipeline in western Xinjiang province.
Gas imports from Kazakhstan are sent via a pipeline owned by private company Xinjiang Guanghui Energy.
China did not import any gas from Myanmar in October, after recording 10,874 mt in September -- the first time volumes showed up in customs data after the commissioning of the Myanmar-China pipeline in early August.
Coupled with total LNG imports of 1.36 million mt, China's total gas and LNG imports rose 15.5% year on year to 3.19 million mt in October, or roughly 4.4 billion cu m.
Subtracting gas exports of about 200 million cu m to Macau and Hong Kong and including domestic production of 9.23 billion cu m, China's apparent demand for gas -- excluding any volumes held in storage -- rose 9.8% year on year to 13.43 billion cu m in October, according to Platts calculations.
Over January to October, gas imports -- including LNG volumes of 14.25 million mt -- totaled 30.73 million mt, a 25.8% year-on-year increase.
Taking into account domestic output of 92.01 billion cu m and exports totaling 1.98 billion cu m, apparent demand for gas over January-October was 132.44 billion cu m, up 12.3% year on year.
