13th Roundtable Meeting The 13th Japan-South Korea-Taiwan Roundtable meeting was held from September 30 to October 2 at the InterContinental Tokyo Bay hotel. This meeting is held every two years by rotation among the Japan Gas Association, Korea City Gas Association and Taiwan Gas Association to exchange information and opinions on the current status of and issues in the gas business management environment. Vice Chairman Kanisawa and seven others attended from Japan, seven attended from Taiwan and ten attended from South Korea. Group photo of all attendees The roundtable meeting consists of country reports and a theme session. In the country reports, representatives from each gas association reported on regular items (energy policy, regulations and outlook, gas business conditions [LNG imports, sale volume, customer volume, etc.], R&D and promotion of natural gas use). Vice Chairman Kanisawa presented for Japan and explained regulatory reform of gas business. Attendees from South Korea and Taiwan showed much interest in the regulatory reform and the consensus-building with stakeholders and recovery support system for when large-scale disasters occur. Toshiyuki Kanisawa, JGA Vice Chairman, delivering a presentation of country report In the theme sessions on house pipe safety and maintenance, Mr. Furusawa, chief of Gas Appliance & Service Pipe Technology Group in the Gas Technology Department of JGA, explained that for house pipes, which are manufactured consumer assets, old buried pipe repair and damage from on-site construction are becoming big issues, and presented house pipe safety and maintenance methods and ways to prevent gas pipe damage during on-site construction. The situation of mismatch between divisions of the house pipe asset and the safety/maintenance responsibility in both South Korea and Taiwan resembles that of Japan. Therefore, there was much discussion of asset division and liability and many questions about countermeasures. The third day included a technical tour of Ohgishima LNG Terminal and Ohgishima Power (an LNG thermal power plant) in cooperation with Tokyo Gas. The next round table meeting is scheduled to be held in South Korea in 2017. Below are Japan's country report and theme session presentations. Country Report >>> Current Status of Gas Industry in Japan Theme Session: House pipe safety and maintenance >>> Maintenance of House Pipes in Japan's City Gas Industry: Regulations and Voluntary Initiatives by Gas Utilities

International Gas Union LNG Committee meeting held in Osaka The LNG Committee (committee chair: Shuzo Maeda of Osaka Gas), one of 11 committees operating according to the International Gas Union's 2015-2018 American Triennium that began this June, held its first meeting of this term in Osaka from September 15 to September 18, with 41 participants from 13 countries around the world. Each IGU committee conducts surveys and research on certain themes and reports its findings at the World Gas Conference held every three years. This term, the LNG committee has established three subcommittees to conduct surveys and research into LNG-related sectors ranging from marketing to engineering. The subcommittee themes are 1) FLNG Concepts (LNG FPSO & FSRU), Facts and Differentiators, 2) Competitiveness (Liquidity) of LNG in the Energy Market and 3) Enhancing LNG Facility Functionality. The Osaka meeting confirmed that the members of each subcommittee had a shared understanding of the issues, and work schedules and individual sector responsibilities were hammered out with much enthusiasm. This committee is also responsible for editing and publishing the IGU World LNG Report. This report is issued annually and referenced widely from various quarters. The 2016 edition is scheduled to be issued at LNG18 next April in Perth, Australia. After the meeting the members got to know one another better through technical tours of Osaka Gas' Himeji LNG Terminal. The next meeting is scheduled to be held in March 2016 in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, in the U.S. Group photo of LNG committee

Operation Results of City Gas Cogeneration Systems for FY2014 (Total Installed Capacity) The Japan Gas Association has compiled a report on the operational results of city gas cogeneration systems for FY2014 based on a survey of 206 city gas utilities nationwide. The total installed capacity of cogeneration systems (excluding steam turbines) using city gas as of the end of FY2014 (end of March 2015) was 5,046 MW, a 134MW (2.7%) increase from FY2013. The total installed base was 230,736 units, up 39,632 systems (20.7%). Of these, the total installed base for commercial and industrial use was 7,194 units, up 273 units (3.8 %) from FY2013, and 223,542 units for residential use (gas engine and fuel cell systems), up 39,632 units (20.7%). The JGA and Japan's city gas industry will continue to promote city gas cogeneration systems, which are a distributed energy system with outstanding environmental and energy properties. Chart: Total City Gas Cogeneration Capacity and Systems ∗GE: Gas Engine, GT: Gas Turbine, FC: Fuel Cell ∗Numbers are rounded off to the nearest whole number, and may not match. ∗Source: Hand book of electric power industry (2014 editions) City Gas Sales in the First Half of FY 2015(April to September) Total gas sales by general gas utilities (206 utilities nationwide) in the first half of FY2015 totaled 16,927 million m3 (41.8605 MJ/m3 equivalent), a 0.8% decrease from the same period a year before. By sector: - Gas sales in the residential sector decreased by 1.3% from the first half of the previous fiscal year to 3,516 million m3, reflecting higher temperatures between March and May which drove down demand for gas for water heating. - Gas sales in the commercial sector totaled 2,112 million m3, a decrease of 0.2% from the first half of the previous fiscal year. - Gas sales in the industrial sector decreased by 0.9% from the previous year to 9,931 million m3due to the decreased sales volume with lower operating rates at customer facilities. - Gas sales in the other sectors (hospitals, public facilities, etc.) rose by 0.2% from the previous year to 1,366 million m3. By region: - Regional gas sales grew or fell by following percentages from the first half of the previous fiscal year: +0.3% in Hokkaido, -0.3% in Tohoku, -0.4% in Kanto-Koshinetsu, -1.5% in Chubu-Hokuriku, -1.6% in Kinki, +0.1% in Chugoku, +6.6% in Shikoku, and -2.1% in Kyushu-Okinawa.

Announcements ◇We have updated the Gas Facts in Japan >>> Gas Facts in Japan 2015

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