China is backpedaling on its massive push for the coal-to-gas switch after the move created gas shortages in the north that left people freezing in the cold snap.
The Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Monday in an urgent letter to 28 cities in the north that residents now could continue burning coal or firewood to keep themselves warm in the areas where the switch from coal to natural gas and electricity has not been completed, Caixin reports, despite the ban on coal.
“It is not wrong for Beijing to push the coal-to-gas switch, but the process was a bit too fast and outpaced the market’s capacity,” Xu Bo, a researcher with CNPC’s Research Institute of Economics and Technology, told Reuters.
Related story.So big has been the drive to switch from coal to gas, that China has been buying up liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes on the spot market, pushing spot prices higher than the prices of the oil-indexed LNG cargos in the long-term delivery contracts. Last week, Asia’s LNG spot prices jumped to the highest since January 2015 due to the Chinese demand and strong oil prices.
If you listen to the interview below, it sounds like New England has the same problem as China and is solving it the same way: using diesel fuel as heating fuel during the winter.
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