According to the statistics of the National Development and Reform Commission's operation report, the LNG vaporizer produced 12.9 billion cubic meters of natural gas in July, up 9.4% year on year; The import volume of natural gas was 9.8 billion cubic meters, up 33.6% year on year; The apparent consumption of natural gas was 22.4 billion cubic meters, up 19.1% year on year. From January to July, the natural gas output was 90.8 billion cubic meters, up 5.5% year on year; Natural gas imports reached 68.2 billion cubic meters, up 38.5% year on year; The apparent consumption of natural gas was 157.2 billion cubic meters, up 17.8% year on year.
Driven by the domestic "coal to gas" and the upgrading of energy consumption, China's natural gas consumption has witnessed explosive growth in recent years. However, due to the slow increase of domestic gas production, the proportion of imported gas in China's natural gas supply has increased significantly in recent years. In 2017, China's natural gas import volume reached 92 billion cubic meters, with an external dependence of 38%.
The Opinions on Accelerating the Use of Natural Gas formulated by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Energy Administration pointed out that natural gas should be gradually cultivated as one of the main energy sources of China's modern clean energy system. By 2020, the proportion of natural gas in the primary energy consumption structure should be about 10%, and by 2030, the proportion of natural gas in the primary energy consumption should be about 15%.
The Guiding Opinions on Energy Work in 2018 requires that the total national energy consumption should be controlled at about 4.55 billion tons of standard coal. Among them, the proportion of non fossil energy consumption and natural gas consumption increased to about 14.3% and 7.5% respectively, and the proportion of coal consumption decreased to about 59%. Compared with the energy work target in 2017, the proportion of non fossil energy consumption remained unchanged, the proportion of natural gas consumption increased by 0.7%, and the proportion of coal consumption decreased by 1%.
According to estimates, there is still a supply gap of about 9.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas in China in 2018, and the situation of ensuring supply in winter is still severe. In addition, China's natural gas consumption is planned to reach 360 billion m3 in 2020. In the current situation that the increment of domestic gas and imported pipeline gas is relatively limited, LNG import will become the main force of China's natural gas supply guarantee in the next two years.
