*South Korea, the world’s number three LNG importer, took 46.39mn tons of the supercooled fuel for 2022 (see table). Whilst this only represents a modest 2% increase on 2021 it is nonetheless a new annual high and stands in sharp contrast to 2021’s top importer China, which saw volumes slump 21% for the first 11 months of 2022. With Asia’s other top importer Japan likely having seen a modest fall for 2022, the slump in overall Asian demand enabled Europe to gobble up additional volumes (MEES, 20 January).