China's LNG imports rose 32.8 percent to 26.06 million tons in 2016.
Contracts for LNG supply to China, mainly from western and eastern Australia, and the U.S. Gulf Coast, are up nearly 50 percent year-on-year this year as the government steps up efforts for cleaner burning fuel, he said.
S&P Global Platts forecasts that by 2018, China will surpass South Korea to become the world's second largest LNG importer, trailing only Japan.
As for natural gas, domestic output rose from 50 billion cu m in 2005 to 135 billion cu m in 2016.
China's natural gas use will exceed 360 billion cu m by 2020, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner.
That would be more than 10 percent of China's energy consumption by 2020, up from 7 percent now, according to the commission.
By 2040, China is expected to import as much as Japan, about 311.5 million cu m of natural gas a day, according to the International Energy Agency.
Rising demand for non-fossil fuel has prompted the country's energy behemoths to step up efforts to secure adequate supplies of LNG through imports. They are continuing negotiations with some resource-rich Central Asian nations for additional stocks.
Qu Guangxue, spokesman for CNPC, which accounts for over 70 percent of the natural gas supplied in China, said the company's natural gas demand is expected to reach 81.3 billion cu m this year, up 11.7 percent from 2016.
According to CNPC, the China-Central Asia natural gas pipeline that it built, and which runs through China, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, will have transported a total of 200 billion cu m of natural gas by the end of this month since 2009, equivalent to the total annual natural gas consumption of China or 11 years of natural gas supply for Beijing.
China started importing natural gas through a pipeline from Turkmenistan in 2010 and has since then imported natural gas also from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Myanmar.
Meanwhile, terminals and infrastructure are also being boosted to meet the upsurge in demand. The country's natural gas pipeline network in 2015 reached 64,000 km, and is expected to reach 163,000 km by 2025.
China is also increasing its presence in the Arctic region's natural gas sector, with CNPC participating in the Yamal LNG project with Novatek, Russia's independent natural gas producer, which will ensure CNPC at least 3 million tons of LNG per year.
Li Li, energy research director at consulting firm ICIS China, said the country would also continue to buy considerable LNG from the U.S. till this year-end and beyond, considering the latter's willingness to increase export of its natural resources.
The U.S. would benefit from China's new demand for natural gas and is already a net exporter, she said.
