While there’s no secret that China has increased its natural gas usage, at least for those that follow energy developments, this winter’s gas demand for the country of 1.3 billion still caught many off guard. Ensuing gas shortages and the diversion of gas needed for industrial usage to domestic end-users signaled that Beijing’s early winter ramp up of its plan of replacing dirtier-burning coal with cleaner natural gas for power generation and heating was overly ambitions. Another reflection of the Middle Kingdom’s ravenous gas thirst became evident last week when the world’s largest energy user released its most recent LNG import figures. For January, China imported 5.18 million tonnes of the super-cooled fuel, a new record, compared to the previous record of 5.03 million tonnes set this past December, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs. January’s LNG import levels spiked some 51.2 percent compared to the […]