chinese, page-106

Anatol. Good observations on China. The implication are even wider. I would add that their shale is remote from current large coastal populations which consume most LNG imports. So it will be expensive to build field gathering and processing equipment from scratch, and it will be expensive to build transmission pipelines. It can be done, but it doesn't mean that China can produce cheap gas (cheap labour isn't such a huge advantage in E&P). And in any event, if they do manage to produce material amounts of shale gas, they may just decide to transport it to inland population centres which don't currently have reticulated gas. ie. it might just expand the size of the market. So for myriad reasons, including those you list and the ones I have listed here, the chances of China not needing LNG any time soon are remote.