China 's natural gas imports in May more than doubled from a year earlier to meet robust demand for the cleaner-burning fuel, the National Development and Reform Commission said Monday, citing industry data.

Natural gas imports reached 2.6 billion cubic meters last month, with pipeline gas imports and liquefied natural gas imports each accounting for half of the total, the NDRC said on its website.

Imports in the first five months, at 11.4 billion cubic meters, met one quarter of local consumption, it said.

Domestic natural gas apparent consumption hit 10 billion cubic meters in May, up 24.5% from a year earlier and up 4.6% from the previous month, while gas output reached 8 billion cubic meters, up 5.7% on year and 2.6% on month, NDRC said.

Gas demand for power generation remained at a high level due to continuing power shortages. China National Offshore Oil Corp. raised spot LNG purchases in May and increased daily supplies to power plants by more than 50% from February, NDRC said.

The Central Asia Gas Pipeline linking Turkmenistan and northwestern China transmitted more than 5.7 billion cubic meters of gas to China in the first five months, and its capacity will be increased to 30 billion cubic meters a year by June 2012 from 17.7 billion cubic meters a year now, the pipeline operator China National Petroleum Corp. said Monday.

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