BLBG:Taiwan August LNG Costs Rise by 47% as Crude Oil Climbs
Taiwan paid 47 percent more to import liquefied natural gas in August while purchases rose 1.7 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the Directorate General of Customs.
Asia’s third-biggest LNG buyer imported about 1.17 million metric tons of the fuel in August and paid an average $747 a ton for the fuel, according to the data on the customs website. That is equivalent to about $14.36 per million British thermal units, or almost four times the benchmark gas price in the U.S.
Term supplies, typically indexed to crude-oil prices, from Indonesia in the month were the most expensive at about $979 a ton, according to customs data. Oil prices in New York have climbed about 20 percent in the past year to $89 a barrel.
Taiwan bought three spot cargoes from Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea for an average price of $785 a ton, according to the data. That’s about $4.75 per million Btu higher than front month U.K. gas prices, used to price spot supplies to Asia, according to calculations based on Bloomberg data.
Taiwan purchased six spot shipments from the Atlantic Ocean area in August 2010 for an average $424 a ton, according to customs data.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dinakar Sethuraman in Singapore at dinakar@bloomberg.net; Yu-Huay Sun in Taipei at ysun7@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net
