Houston/New York | China’s voracious appetite for natural gas has sparked a wave of deals with US exporters of the fuel, strengthening energy trade between the world’s two biggest economies even as their relationship grows more fraught.

The latest sales were announced on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) when Venture Global LNG, a company building a pair of liquefied natural gas export plants in Louisiana, said it had agreed two contracts to ship 3.5 million tonnes a year of the fuel to state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the country’s biggest LNG importer.

Financial Times