Inpex Corp, Japan's biggest oil and natural gas explorer, aims to accelerate its expansion of production and sales of LNG on the premise that LNG market will remain tight in the mid-term, its CEO said on Jan. 12.

"Global LNG market is expected to remain tight in the mid-term due to the structural change of the global natural gas market, especially LNG, since Russian invasion of Ukraine," Inpex CEO Takayuki Ueda told Reuters in an interview.

The global gas supply chains have changed, with European countries seeking to import more LNG to replace Russia's pipeline gas and the United States boosting export of the super-chilled fuel, while Russia is looking at providing more gas to India and China, possibly through pipelines, he said.