China could receive in June its first direct US liquefied natural gas shipment in more than a year in a potential sign of thawing energy ties as US President Donald Trump this week heads to Beijing for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Three vessels left US LNG export plants in Louisiana last week and are expected to reach China in mid- to late June, according to data from financial firm LSEG.
While other LNG tankers have left US ports and said they were headed to China over the past year, none have gone from the United States directly to China since Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025, amid simmering trade disputes between the two countries.
The United States is the world's biggest gas exporter, while China is the world's biggest importer.
Several companies in China have contracts to buy LNG from US producers but have sold those cargoes to buyers in other countries over the past year, due primarily to the trade disputes and their ability to make a profit due to elevated global LNG prices.
In recent months, the Chinese buyers were able to sell the US LNG at even higher margins due to market disruptions caused by the Iran war. China, meanwhile, has become more reliant on pipeline imports from Russia and Central Asia, analysts at consultancy EBW Analytics Group said in a recent note.
Receiving US LNG will probably become more attractive as China draws down its inventories, but domestic gas production and cheaper pipeline imports will remain China's preferred sources of supply, said Erica Downs, senior research scholar at Columbia University's Centre on Global Energy Policy.
"Beijing likely views the United States as an unreliable trade partner," Downs said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Umm Al Hanaya vessel left Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass export plant on May 5, while the Al Sailiya and Id'Asah vessels both left Venture Global's Plaquemines plant on May 8, according to LSEG data.
All three vessels were expected to arrive in China's Tianjin port between June 15 and 20. Cheniere and Venture Global are the biggest and second-biggest US LNG producers, respectively.
If any of those vessels actually arrive in China, it would mark the first LNG vessel to go directly to China from the US since February 2025, when the Mu Lan discharged a cargo that was loaded at Cheniere's Corpus Christi plant in Texas in December 2024, according to LSEG data.
In addition to Mu Lan, three other LNG vessels arrived in China directly from the US in 2025 - all in January before Trump started his second term - having departed in November and December of 2024.
In addition to those four ships, the US Department of Energy said two vessels dropped off relatively small amounts of US LNG in China - one in 2025 and the other in 2026 - after first offloading most of their cargoes in Bangladesh. The DOE said those two vessels left the United States in September 2025 and February 2026.
For comparison, the Department of Energy said 64 vessels that left the United States in 2024 dropped off cargoes in China. There were 52 vessels in 2023, 30 in 2022 and a record 131 in 2021.
The United States has been selling LNG to China since at least 2011, according to US Energy Information Administration data going back to 2000.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and Curtis Williams in Houston; Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Nathan Crooks and Will Dunham)
