T&T's ex­ports of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas to Japan are on the in­crease with one analy­sis point­ing out that Japan's sec­ond-largest pow­er util­i­ty, Kan­sai Elec­tric, im­port­ed al­most four times as much LNG from Trinidad and To­ba­go this year than last, as of Au­gust. Platts' analy­sis of Japan's cus­toms cleared im­port da­ta re­vealed that be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust 2011, Kan­sai Elec­tric im­port­ed 216,696 met­ric tonnes from the At­lantic fa­cil­i­ties in Point Fortin, com­pared with 58,240 met­ric tonnes in the same pe­ri­od last year. Kan­sai Elec­tric im­port­ed a to­tal of 114,020 mt of LNG in 2010, which in­cludes a car­go of 55,780 mt tak­en in Sep­tem­ber 2010, the cus­toms da­ta showed.

So far this year, Kan­sai Elec­tric has been Japan's sole buy­er of Trinidad and To­ba­go LNG, ac­cord­ing to the da­ta, al­though Kan­sai Elec­tric de­clined to com­ment. Japan's LNG im­ports from Trinidad and To­ba­go are un­usu­al be­cause of its longer-than-usu­al voy­age com­pared with oth­er sup­pli­ers, ac­cord­ing to the Platts' ar­ti­cle. Sources told Platts' that the LNG comes from a short-term con­tract with a sup­pli­er in At­lantic LNG. They said this con­tract was signed be­fore the dev­as­tat­ing March 11 earth­quake as part of Kan­sai Elec­tric's strat­e­gy to ful­fil its re­quire­ments from short-term and mid-term con­tracts.

The util­i­ty's Au­gust car­go of 56,827 met­ric tonnes from Trinidad cost just $8.99 per­MMB­tu, while the Japan LNG Cock­tail, or JLC price, stood at $16.372/MMB­tu in the month, ac­cord­ing to cus­toms da­ta. Since the con­tract was signed, Japan's LNG im­port prices have soared but the very low At­lantic LNG price ap­pears to re­flect prices pre­vail­ing when the deal was done, ac­cord­ing to the Platts' ar­ti­cle. Point Fortin-based At­lantic LNG op­er­ates the At­lantic group, three sep­a­rate com­pa­nies owned by sub­sidiaries of the UK's BP and BG Group, Span­ish Rep­sol YPF, French GDF Suez, and The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.