Glencore's 2018 joint venture with Zhejiang, which is funded by the provincial government, makes it one of the few Western traders with such ties in China , the world's leading purchaser of crude oil and the second largest importer of LNG.

Alex Sanna, global oil and gas head of Glencore, told an oil and gas seminar in Zhoushan that the shipment was expected in two weeks to arrive there.

The first spot cargo purchase came after the natural gas group of the Zhejiang firm pumped funds into the joint venture in June, Sanna added.

Zhoushan, which receives increasing flows of super-chilled natural gas, is the site of a terminal owned by ENN Energy Holdings, a private Chinese gas company with an annual capacity of 3 million tonnes. It is the largest privately-controlled facility of this kind in China.

The joint venture traded 5 million tonnes of oil and gas during the first half of the year, a rise of more than 50 percent from a year ago, Glencore's Sanna said.

Maritime Business World