China may reduce spot imports of liquefied natural gas from the United States in the near future because of tariff uncertainty

SMM8, July 7 / PRNewswire-FirstCall-Asianet / several Chinese end-users and suppliers said on Monday that China could impose a 25 per cent tariff on US LNG imports and block spot purchases of US gas in the short term. Chinese end-users told Platts Energy Information (Platts) that if tariffs were imposed, the cost of liquefied natural gas in the US would rise above spot prices that companies could afford in the short term.

China's imports of liquefied natural gas in the US have recently fallen, importing four batches of liquefied natural gas in June and July alone, compared with five in May alone. China imported more than 1.88 million tonnes of US liquefied natural gas between January and July, compared with 1.61 million tonnes for the whole of 2017, according to S & P Global Platts Analytics). Even if import tariffs are not imposed immediately, the uncertainty of the tariff threat may prompt importers to completely halt imports of liquefied natural gas or resell it to other countries. Platts Energy Information (Platts) reported earlier that (Unipec), the Chinese oil company, resold large quantities of US crude oil in June after the Chinese government announced in mid-June that it was considering imposing a 25 per cent import tariff on US crude oil. China hit an all-time high of 14.65 million barrels of US crude in June, but imports more than halved to 6.9 million barrels in July, according to Standard & Poor's global Platts trade data.

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