PetroChina says Beijing, HK natural gas supplies resume

PetroChina Co. said it has unloaded a liquefied natural gas cargo near Beijing, easing a shortage of the fuel in northern China, while also restarting pipeline supplies in the south toward Hong Kong that were disrupted last week by a landslide.
With the unloading of a LNG cargo at the Tangshan terminal in northern China, the supply tightness in the region has been “greatly alleviated,” PetroChina spokesman Mao Zefeng said by phone. The LNG cargo, imported to meet peak gas demand in the Chinese capital, couldn’t be unloaded earlier because of heavy fog and wind, he said.
Separately, the company’s pipeline gas supply to Hong Kong has returned to normal, Mao said. The landslide accident in Shenzhen last week damaged a pipeline that supplied the Lung Kwu Tan power plant in Tuen Mun, which accounts for a quarter of Hong Kong’s electricity, according to ICIS China, a Shanghai-based commodities researcher.
CLP Holdings Ltd., an electricity supplier in Hong Kong and a PetroChina customer, said in an e-mail yesterday that gas supplies from mainland China haven’t been restored and the company is working with the gas supplier to repair the pipeline. PetroChina’s Mao didn’t answer two calls to his mobile phone and didn’t immediately reply to an e-mail seeking a response to CLP’s statement.
Beijing ordered offices to reduce heating to as low as 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit) and suspended supplies to some industrial users in response to the shortage of natural gas. The lowest temperatures in more than six decades in northern China is leading to a surge in natural gas consumption, according to China National Petroleum Corp., PetroChina’s parent. Bloomberg