Slowdown hits natural gas use

The growth of natural gas consumption fell to a 10-year low of 8.9 percent last year from 17.4 percent in 2013, a result of the nation's economic slowdown, an industry think tank said on Wednesday.

Consumption was far below expectations at 183 billion cubic meters, said Sun Xiansheng, head of the CNPC Economic and Technology Research Institute. It estimated that natural gas demand will be about 200 billion cu m this year with imports of 65 billion cu m.

In 2014, China imported 59 billion cu m of natural gas, up 11.5 percent year-on-year, which means that about 32.2 percent of gas demand was satisfied by imports.