On Tuesday, China’s National Development and Reform (NDRC), the state planner, said that for this winter, the country will see its gas supplies tightly balanced but the coal inventories would be abundant.
"Amid tight natural gas supply and soaring gas prices globally, China's natural gas supply and demand would be in tight balance in general," Meng Wei, a spokesperson for NDRC said. She added that some regions may see tight supplies in peak demand hours.
Meanwhile, Meng assured that with the increase in coal output, the supply would be sufficient until the next spring.
The NDRC will push domestic gas fields to boost output and order for non-residential users to cut their gas consumption to ensure household usage.
In October, the country’s natural gas production inched up by 0.5% year-on-year. However, energy companies’ officials have predicted that China’s gas demand to climb by around 10% this winter.
Since November 7, the daily natural gas output rose to more than 1 bcm, up by 10% year-on-year.
However, the price for liquefied natural gas (LNG) for December delivery to Northeast Asia was at USD31.50/mmBtu on Friday, expanding by 116% year-on-year.
On the other hand, as of November 14, China’s coal stockpiles hit 129 million tonnes and, by the end of this month, the number is estimated to exceed 140 million tonnes.
According to the NDRC, spot thermal coal prices with an energy value of 5,500 kcal stand at below CNY900/tonne (USD141/tonne) at mines and at about CNY1,095/tonne (USD171.52/tonne) at northern ports after a slew of government interventions. The most-active Zhengzhou thermal coal futures contract fell 3.2% on Tuesday to CNY819.4/tonne (USD128.35/tonne).
In comparison, in early October, the prices hit CNY2,500/tonne (USD391.6/tonne).
