Asian liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) spot prices for Sep­tem­ber rose above US$15 per mil­lion British ther­mal units (mmB­tu) dur­ing the week, with strong Asian de­mand keep­ing prices high. "Asian mar­kets were hold­ing just north of the US$15 lev­el for car­goes as the de­mand for LNG con­tin­ues to ramp up," ICAP an­a­lysts said in a note. Top LNG im­porters Japan and South Ko­rea both re­port­ed high­er im­ports for Ju­ly. Japan's LNG im­ports rose 14.3 per cent in Ju­ly com­pared with the same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er as the na­tion con­tin­ues to de­pend on the fu­el to re­place nu­clear pow­er lost due to the March earth­quake, while South Ko­rea's im­ports in­creased 9 per cent year-on-year.

Spot prices in Asia have now risen over 50 per cent since Japan's earth­quake in March boost­ed de­mand for LNG. The spread be­tween Asian spot prices around US$15.10 and British prices was about US$5.40 per mmB­tu this week, wide enough to coax car­goes to Asia from the At­lantic. Re­cent Niger­ian car­goes have been sent east to high­er-pay­ing Pa­cif­ic mar­kets. Ship­ments to Asia from the Mid­dle East and the At­lantic Basin in­creased by 1.357 mil­lion and 1.146 mil­lion met­ric tons re­spec­tive­ly in Ju­ly, while Asia-Pa­cif­ic ship­ments of LNG to Asian buy­ers fell, Wa­ter­borne LNG an­a­lysts said in a note. Qatar, Nige­ria, Trinidad, Yemen, and Abu Dhabi had the largest year-over-year in­creas­es ship­ments to Asia. And the trend looks set to con­tin­ue, de­spite ex­treme­ly high ship­ping costs of just un­der US$100,000 a day.

"Spreads to Asia from the At­lantic re­main at all time highs with win­ter 11 spreads now look­ing close to US$7.50," ICAP an­a­lysts said. Sup­ply from the At­lantic Basin was al­so seen in South Ko­rea's long term sup­ply agree­ments with Shell and To­tal signed this week. Un­der the deals, to­tal­ing US$84 bil­lion, car­goes will be sourced from Aus­tralia, and from com­pa­ny port­fo­lios across the At­lantic Basin. The boom in Asian sup­ply may leave Eu­ro­pean im­port ter­mi­nals short as Asia sucks up At­lantic Basin sup­ply, an­a­lysts said this week. In the At­lantic, US gas prices hit five month lows on Thurs­day and am­ple sup­ply con­tin­ued to de­ter spot LNG ship­ments to ter­mi­nals there. Flows from US ter­mi­nals hit 0.63 bil­lion cu­bic feet per day on av­er­age last week, ac­cord­ing to Tu­dor Pick­er­ing Holt an­a­lysts. The flows are near con­trac­tu­al min­i­mums, as traders ship gas else­where. US de­liv­er­ies av­er­aged 1.2 bcfd in 2010.