TotalEnergies Plans 13.5 Million-Tonne LNG Supply Deal With China's Jiangsu

TotalEnergies and Jiangsu Guoxin Group have signed a Heads of Agreement for 900,000 tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year for 15 years, with deliveries intended to begin in 2028. The framework implies 13.5 million tonnes of nominal supply across the full term.

The November 4, 2026 announcement is a preliminary commercial step, not a completed long-term sales contract. TotalEnergies said the arrangement remains subject to finalization of sales-and-purchase agreements. The companies did not disclose a price formula or the detailed conditions that must be met before deliveries start.

Rudong terminal would receive the cargoes

The LNG is intended for Jiangsu Guoxin's new terminal at Rudong. The buyer plans to use the gas for city supply and flexible power generation, particularly to help meet peaks in provincial demand. TotalEnergies described Jiangsu as China's second-largest province by both gross domestic product and natural-gas consumption.

Agrilinkage calculation from the announced annual volume and term. The Heads of Agreement still requires final sales-and-purchase contracts.

The 13.5-million-tonne figure is Agrilinkage's simple multiplication of 0.9 million tonnes a year by 15 years. It represents contracted nominal volume if the same annual rate is delivered for the entire term; it does not account for possible contractual flexibility, outages, cargo timing or changes agreed in the final contracts.

Why provincial gas security has wider industrial consequences

Jiangsu is a major manufacturing and food-processing base, so the reliability and cost of gas and electricity can affect cold storage, industrial steam, packaging, chemicals, transport infrastructure and other parts of the physical economy. Gas-fired generation can also balance electricity demand when variable power output changes. The announcement does not identify individual industrial customers or allocate the cargoes to particular factories.

Natural gas is also the principal feedstock for ammonia production in much of the world, linking gas markets to nitrogen-fertilizer costs. However, Jiangsu Guoxin identified city gas and flexible power generation as the intended uses for these volumes. It would be inaccurate to assume that the announced cargoes will directly supply fertilizer plants without a disclosed allocation.

A long commitment, but key commercial terms remain undisclosed

Starting in 2028 would place the agreement beyond the immediate spot market and into the next phase of Chinese LNG infrastructure development. Long-term contracts can support supply planning for buyers and investment decisions for sellers, but their economic effect depends on pricing, destination flexibility, take-or-pay obligations, shipping terms and credit protections. None of those details was provided in the announcement.

TotalEnergies said its global LNG portfolio reached 44 million tonnes in 2025 and that it has access to more than 20 million tonnes a year of regasification capacity in Europe. Those figures are company descriptions of its broader portfolio, not volumes dedicated to Jiangsu. The company has not identified which liquefaction projects or trading positions would supply the proposed Rudong deliveries.

What to watch next

The critical milestone is the signing of final sales-and-purchase agreements. Those documents would normally clarify the effective start date, pricing basis, delivery point, flexibility provisions and remedies for non-performance. Terminal commissioning at Rudong and the buyer's downstream gas and power connections will also determine how quickly the annual volume can be absorbed.

For energy and industrial users, the most useful evidence after 2028 will be actual cargo arrivals, terminal utilization, provincial gas demand, power-generation dispatch and the relationship between contracted and spot LNG costs. Until final contracts are signed, the 13.5-million-tonne total remains the scale implied by the framework rather than a guaranteed delivered quantity.

Primary document: TotalEnergies' November 4 announcement. Agrilinkage calculated the 13.5-million-tonne nominal total from the disclosed 900,000 tonnes per year and 15-year term.

Visual note: the cover is an original conceptual editorial illustration of an LNG carrier and receiving terminal. It does not depict a specific TotalEnergies cargo or the Rudong terminal.