Singapore’s LNG bunker price premium over Rotterdam has narrowed by $13/mt on the week to $35/mt, as buying activity has slowed in the overall East Asian LNG market.

Weekly changes in LNG bunker prices:

• Rotterdam up by $1/mt to $616/mt
• Singapore down by $12/mt at $651/mt

Rotterdam

Rotterdam’s LNG bunker price has stabilised after falling for three weeks.

The front-month Dutch TTF Natural Gas contract has moved $0.10/MMBtu ($5/mt) higher in the past week. That upward pressure has been countered by a $0.10/MMBtu ($5/mt) drop in the assessed bunker delivery premium, which is now at $2.38/MMBtu ($124/mt).

TTF has been supported by a slowdown in LNG imports to northwest Europe and Italy, and mild weather for this time of the year, said ANZ’s Daniel Hynes.

The EU’s gas inventories are now less than 70% full, down from 72% a week ago, and down from nearly 79% at this time last year, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe.

Europe’s gas market is expected to become better supplied in the medium term, with increased export capacity coming online in the US, according to ING’s Warren Patterson. The EU will ban short-term contracts for LNG imports from Russia from April 2026, and long-term contracts from January 2027. These LNG imports make up about 13% of Europe’s total in the first 11 months of the year.

Pipeline gas imports from Russia are set to be phased out of the EU by September 2027, and ING’s Patterson expects US LNG to plug most of that supply gap.

Dutch LNG bunker demand has been strong recently, according to Kpler. The market intelligence firm said volumes rose by around 20,000 cbm from October to 87,000 cbm in November. TotalEnergies’ Gas Agility bunker vessel was particularly busy and doubled its delivered volumes from 15,000 cbm to 31,000 cbm. Shell’s LNG London also doubled its volumes, from 6,000 cbm to 12,000 cbm.

Singapore

Singapore’s LNG bunker price has declined again in the past week.

The price has shed $12/mt amid a similar-sized decline in the front-month NYMEX Japan/Korea Marker (JKM) contract. The bunker delivery premium came off slightly from $0.04/MMBtu ($2/mt) to $1.82/MMBtu ($95/mt).

JKM has dipped amid tepid LNG spot demand in Northeast Asia and plentiful supplies, said the Japan Organisation for Metals and Energy Security (JOCMEC). There was some buying from South Korea, but not enough for a price recovery. Japanese LNG stocks for power generation rose by 110,000 mt in the week to 7 December, when they measured 2.18 million mt.

Kpler estimates that 119,000 cbm of LNG was bunkered in Singapore in November, which was 13,000 cbm less than in October. There were 38 bunker stems delivered, a two-stem decline from October. Pavilion’s Brassavola and FueLNG’s Venosa supplied one fewer stem each. Only one bulk carrier received LNG in November, a sharp drop from eight in October.   

Other LNG bunker news

LNG supplier Axpo has delivered a first liquefied biomethane (LBM) stem in the Italian Port of Genoa, while Sinopec and Anhui Wanbo have delivered what they claim was China’s first LBM stem in Dalian.

ADNOC L&S has taken delivery of the fourth in a series of six LNG dual-fuel vessels, and Deltamarin got its design of an LNG bunker vessel approved by class societies.

LNG was also in the headlines in the US, where US shipbuilder Conrad Shipyard said it would explore building LNG bunker vessels with Samsung Heavy Industries.

By Erik Hoffmann

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