Trade of LNG fuel

Global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade grew by 4.5% from 2020 to 2021, reaching an all-time high of 372.3 million tonnes. A strong post-pandemic recovery resulted in a surge in LNG imports, even though the annual growth rate of 4.5% remains far from pre-COVID-19 levels of 13.0% in 2019, according to the International Gas Union (IGU) World Energy Report 2022.

The largest global LNG trade route continues to be intra-Asia Pacific trade (81.9 million tonnes), driven mainly by continued growth in exports from Australia to Japan (26.8 million tonnes), South Korea (9.7 million tonnes) and Taiwan (6.3 million tonnes). Most of the remaining supply out of the Asia Pacific region ended up in Asia in 2021, as was the case in 2020.

The region had the second-largest LNG trade flow in 2