Meanwhile, the country's natural gas imports have maintained fast growth. It imported about 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas this year with an annual growth rate of 35.7 percent, C1 Energy said.

Chinese traders are turning to foreign sellers for LNG because of a domestic supply shortage, C1 Energy said on Wednesday.

It said the domestic LNG resources cannot meet the demand from downstream buyers.

Given this situation, the Chinese energy company has been expanding its LNG businesses overseas.

PetroChina announced in May that it would jointly develop a proposed LNG export facility in Canada with Shell Canada Ltd, Korea Gas Corp and Mitsubishi Corp.

The project, located near Kitimat, British Columbia, will initially consist of two LNG processing units, each with the capacity to produce 6 million metric tons of LNG annually, with an option to expand the project to a total of 24 million tons a year.

The seller, BHP, is facing falling iron ore demand globally, especially from the biggest consumer China.

"The iron ore industry is in a declining path globally," said Zhang Tieshan, an analyst from steel information provider Mysteel.com. "Many global iron ore miners are cutting their investments in order to be more focused on their profitable businesses."

dujuan@chinadaily.com.cn

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