Japan's JERA FY 2023-24 spot LNG procurement falls to 4.5 mil mt from record 7 mil mt year ago

Japan's largest power generation company JREA bought about 4.5 million mt of spot LNG for power generation in fiscal year 2023-24 (April-March), falling 35.7% from a record 7 million mt in FY 2022-23, a company executive said April 30.

Speaking at an online press briefing, Naohiro Maekawa, JERA's executive officer and head of the financial strategy and planning division, said that the company's FY 2023-24 spot LNG procurement was down about 2.5 million mt from an unusually high level in FY 2022-23.

Asked to comment on its FY 2024-25 spot LNG procurement outlook, Maekawa said JERA plans "a certain degree of spot LNG procurement" but declined to elaborate further.

The company had said April 28, 2023, that the outage at the US Freeport LNG outage, from where it lifts 2.32 million mt/year of Freeport LNG, was "the main reason" for the boost in spot LNG procurement in FY 2022-23. JERA also has a 25.7% stake in Freeport LNG Development, the operator of the Freeport LNG project.

In FY 2021-22, JERA bought 4.5 million mt/year of spot LNG, which was a previous record at the time.

JERA's spot LNG procurements were significantly boosted in recent years as part of its efforts to ensure a stable electricity supply, responding to fluctuations in its power and supply-demand balance during the summer and winter seasons.

During FY 2023-24, JERA consumed 23.01 million mt of LNG, down 2.6% from a year ago, while it cut its coal consumption by 6.7% on the year to 20.03 million mt. Its fuel oil consumption came in at 207,000 kl or 1.30 million barrels in the fiscal year ended March 31, compared with 29,000 kl a year ago.

JERA sold 236.2 TWh of electricity in FY 2023-24, down 7.4% from 255.1 TWh a year ago.