Mitsui Hunts LNG Stakes in Middle East, US and Australia as Data Centre Power Demand Reshapes Long-Term Trade Flows
The Japanese trading house's push for new LNG equity comes as Asian import data reveal a market pulled in opposite directions by AI-driven power needs and falling Chinese volumes.
China cut its liquefied natural gas imports by 8.9 million tonnes in 2025, the steepest decline among all importing nations, according to the International Gas Union's annual world LNG report published in July (2026-07-19). India's fell by 1.5 million tonnes in the same period. Together they drove Asian imports down 9.2 million tonnes to 108.7 million tonnes, a reversal that would, at first glance, suggest softening demand for long-term supply deals.6
Mitsui & Co. is reading the same data differently. The Japanese trading house is actively seeking equity stakes or offtake positions in LNG projects across the Middle East, the United States and Australia, with its chief executive citing the power requirements of the data centre industry as the driver, Rigzone reported on Sunday (2026-05-31). The company sees long-term contracted LNG as the most reliable way to underwrite the baseload electricity those facilities require.4,3
The divergence between near-term volume weakness and long-term investment rationale is genuine, not contradictory. China's 2025 import decline to 69.77 million tonnes reflected mild early-year temperatures, rising domestic gas output and expanded pipeline flows from Russia via the Power of Siberia 1 route, the IGU report noted. That pipeline dynamic is itself evolving: Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a legally binding memorandum to build the 50 billion-cubic-meter-per-year Power of Siberia 2, which would further displace seaborne LNG from China's import mix if it proceeds.6,1
That displacement is exactly the kind of structural shift that makes Mitsui's search for non-Chinese demand anchors logical. AI-related power consumption is distributing across markets in ways that differ from historical LNG demand patterns. Wood Mackenzie estimates spending by the five largest hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft, Google and peers — will jump 50% to more than $300 billion in 2025, and US utilities have already committed to adding 116 gigawatts of large load to their networks, equivalent to roughly 15% of US peak electricity demand.2
JKM, the benchmark for Asian spot LNG cargoes, stood at $21.82 per MMBtu as of Thursday (2026-07-24), a level that reflects the current balance between softer Chinese and Indian buying and persistent supply competition. India imported 24.60 million tonnes in 2025, a 1.5-million-tonne decline, though the infrastructure story runs counter to the volume one: India added 7.1 million tonnes per annum of regasification capacity through the year, including the new Chhara terminal, and surpassed Spain to become the fourth-largest regasification market globally with 52.5 mtpa across eight terminals.6
That gap between capacity build and import volumes suggests Indian buyers are positioning for demand they expect but have not yet materialised. European buyers are showing the opposite instinct. Despite the ongoing phase-out of Russian pipeline gas and supply concerns from the Middle East, European importers have been reluctant to sign long-term US LNG offtake agreements, sources told OilPrice.com in June (2026-06-12). The concern centres on policy risk and price exposure over decade-long contract horizons rather than physical availability.5
Wood Mackenzie's base case sees compound annual power demand growth of over 5% in China, India and Southeast Asia through to 2050, with those three markets accounting for an outsized share of global incremental consumption. An overall CAGR of just over 2% globally masks wide country variation. Denmark, at a projected 157% growth in demand, and Serbia, at 30%, illustrate how unevenly the energy transition is expected to land across power systems.2
For LNG developers trying to underwrite final investment decisions on projects that will operate for 25 years or more, the AI demand thesis provides a narrative that traditional price-cycle analysis cannot easily supply. Hyperscaler power contracts — typically structured around guaranteed offtake at negotiated rates — offer a model that resembles LNG tolling arrangements, which may be part of what Mitsui is trying to replicate on the supply side.3,2
The risk sitting beneath all of this is the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline. If the 50-bcm-per-year agreement between Gazprom and CNPC proceeds to construction, it would add the equivalent of roughly 37 million tonnes per annum of gas to China via pipeline, potentially widening the structural gap between installed regasification capacity across Asia and the seaborne volumes needed to fill it. That would put Mitsui's new LNG equity in direct competition with Russian pipeline molecules for market share in the world's largest importing region.1,6