South Korea’s LNG Imports Climb 30% in November as Prices Drop

Imports of liquefied natural gas into South Korea, the world’s second-largest buyer of the fuel, rose 30 percent in November as the price paid dropped.

Shipments increased to 3 million metric tons from 2.3 million a year earlier, data on the Korea Customs Service’s website showed today. Imports also increased from 2.68 million tons in October.

The cost of the purchases rose to $2.02 billion last month, compared with $1.62 billion a year earlier, the data showed. The average price paid per ton fell to $667.45 from $703.88 during the same period, according to the website.

South Korea buys most of the cleaner-burning fuel under multi year contracts from suppliers including Qatar, Indonesia and Oman. Last month’s purchases included 60,158 tons on the spot market for about $668.82 a ton from Norway, data showed.

State-run Korea Gas Corp. (036460), the world’s biggest LNG buyer, said on Dec. 11 that November sales rose 31 percent to 3.5 million tons.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sungwoo Park in Seoul at spark47@bloomberg.net; Sangim Han in Seoul at sihan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net