Bloomberg: Biggest LNG Buyer Turning Seller as Reload Terminal to Start

A facility on Japan’s Pacific coast will be ready next month to ship liquefied natural gas abroad, as a global glut turns the world’s biggest buyer into a seller of the fuel.

Shizuoka Gas Co. plans to complete a reloading facility at its Sodeshi terminal in April, Hirotaka Kaneda, deputy general manager at the utility’s feedstock department, said in an interview. The company, which purchases about 1 million metric tons a year of LNG and distributes city gas to about 300,000 customers in a prefecture southwest of Mt. Fuji, plans to resell as many two cargoes a year to neighboring Asian countries such as China and South Korea, he said.

The Sodeshi terminal would be the first Japanese facility to be regularly used to resell cargoes and its impending start is evidence of how a global glut of the fuel is reshaping the LNG market. While bigger buyers such as Jera Co. and Korea Gas Corp. are banding together to demand more say in negotiations with their suppliers amid a wave of new projects from Australia to the U.S., smaller companies such as Shizuoka Gas are seeking to take advantage of abundant gas by building reloading facilities. MORE