Mitsui Bets on LNG as China Routes Demand to Russian Pipelines
China cut LNG imports by 8.9 million tonnes in 2025 as Russian pipeline supply displaced seaborne volumes, complicating Mitsui's push for new long-term supply deals to power AI data centres.
China cut liquefied natural gas imports by 8.9 million tonnes in 2025 to 69.77 million tonnes, the International Gas Union reported in its annual world LNG report published on 19 July (2026-07-19), the largest single-country decline in the commodity that year. China remained the world's biggest buyer, but the reduction was driven by mild early-year temperatures, rising domestic gas output and ramped-up pipeline supply through the Power of Siberia route, the IGU said. JKM spot held at $21.25/MMBtu on Tuesday (2026-08-04), unchanged on the day.7
The data arrives as Mitsui & Co. is pressing ahead with a search for equity stakes and long-term offtake agreements across the Middle East, the United States and Australia. The Japanese trading house's chief executive set out the investment ambitions in late May (2026-05-29), citing AI data centre electricity demand as the primary driver. The company is pursuing supply growth in a market where its two largest Asian buyers both cut volumes last year.4,5
Mitsui already holds a 1 million tonne per year offtake contract with Venture Global and a stake in the UAE's Ruwais LNG project, which is scheduled to start production in 2028.4
China's LNG decline has a longer-dated cause embedded in it. On 19 May (2026-05-19), during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing, Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation signed a legally binding memorandum to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline — a 2,600-kilometre link from Russia's Yamal Peninsula to northern China via eastern Mongolia, designed to carry up to 50 billion cubic metres of gas annually, according to CSIS and the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy.1,2,3
If Power of Siberia 2 is built on schedule, China could be importing more than 100 billion cubic metres of Russian gas annually after 2030, accounting for more than one-fifth of its projected total gas demand at that point, CSIS estimates show. In 2024, China took in 107 bcm of LNG and 71 bcm of pipeline gas, CSIS data show. Fifty additional bcm of Russian supply on top of that baseline materially reduces the seaborne LNG call on China well beyond mid-decade.2
Pricing is the established obstacle. The Power of Siberia 1 deal, a $400 billion contract concluded in May 2014 after roughly a decade of talks accelerated by Russia's annexation of Crimea, showed how patient both sides can be, according to CSIS. PoS-2's binding commercial terms are not yet agreed, and the memorandum inked on 19 May (2026-05-19) marks the start of a commercial process, not its conclusion.2
India cut LNG imports by 1.5 million tonnes in 2025 to 24.60 million tonnes, but 2025 also saw India add 7.1 million tonnes per annum of regasification capacity, through the commissioning of the Chhara LNG terminal at 5 mtpa and the Dabhol LNG breakwater expansion at 2.1 mtpa, lifting India past Spain to become the world's fourth-largest regasification market at 52.5 mtpa across eight terminals, according to IGU. The gap between installed infrastructure and actual import volumes points to a buyer constrained by price, not capacity.7
Asia Pacific as a whole remained the largest LNG import region in 2025 at 168.7 million tonnes, rising 3.6 million tonnes year on year, IGU data show. Within Asia specifically, volumes fell 9.2 million tonnes to 108.7 million tonnes, driven by the China and India weakness alongside softer demand in Thailand and Pakistan. The regional aggregate flatters the individual-country picture.7
The data centre argument underpinning Mitsui's investment thesis runs through a separate demand channel. Rystad Energy projects fuel cell revenues, partly driven by data centre developers seeking on-site power to bypass congested grids, will grow from roughly $2.8 billion in 2025 to around $30 billion by 2030 as AI computing load expands. That would represent durable incremental gas demand, though it competes for volumes against the conventional LNG trade rather than adding to it cleanly.6
Ruwais LNG starts production in 2028. Power of Siberia 2's commercial terms remain unresolved, and the PoS-1 precedent puts negotiations potentially years from a close. JKM spot at $21.25/MMBtu on Tuesday (2026-08-04) sits as a lone bullish outlier in a commodity with a broadly bearish consensus, and the distance between that signal and the directional pull of Chinese buyers locking in Russian pipeline volumes is the trade Mitsui is navigating without a clear resolution in sight.7,2,4