(Yicai Global) June 27 -- The natural gas trading platform of Jiangsu Rudong Yangkou Port Energy Center has attracted 41 participating firms, according to its parent company.

The firms achieved taxable sales of CNY7.6 billion (USD1.1 billion) last year, Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange announced on June 24.

Yangkou Port Energy Center went into operation in 2019, with the aim of building a professional supporting facilities system in China’s eastern Jiangsu province to integrate logistics hubs, information bases, and sales centers for liquefied natural gas and hazardous chemicals.

Complete natural gas infrastructure and markets are necessary to build a gas trading hub, said Wang Yingjun, deputy general manager of Yangkou Port Energy Center.

Yangkou Port Energy Center is striving to attract firms and boost capacity during construction of the trading platform. The LNG terminal at Yangkou Port is the first one in the Yangtze River Delta region to have reached a capacity of 10 million tons. It took more than 44 million tons of LNG over its 11 years of operating as of the end of May, equal to 13 years of gas supply in Jiangsu.

Yangkou Port’s LNG terminal has transport links with 25 countries rich in LNG resources, including Qatar, Australia, and Russia.

Editor: Futura Costaglione