Tokyo Gas Co., Japan’s biggest gas distributor, plans to buy stakes in natural-gas projects to ensure supplies, and import between 10 million and 11 million metric tons of the fuel this year, a company official said. “We want to be the foundation buyer” from liquefied natural gas projects, Kunio Nohata, senior general manager of gas resources, said in an interview after attending the Asia Oil and Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur today. He didn’t identify the developments that Tokyo Gas is considering. Demand for natural gas from factories and businesses in Japan has fallen between 5 percent and 10 percent after the March 11 earthquake, he said. The decline was compensated by increased consumption at power plants making up for a loss of generation from nuclear reactors. To contact the reporter on this story: Dinakar Sethuraman in Singapore at dinakar@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net

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