China's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier "Pan Asia" was put into service in Shanghai on Saturday. With a length of 290 meters and a width of 46.95 meters, Pan Asia is almost the size of an aircraft carrier and is China's largest LNG carrier. Pan Asia is able to carry 174,000 cubic meters of LNG, which can gasify into 107 million cubic meters of natural gas. In other words, it can supply enough gas for the consumption of 600,000 households for a year, if the average consumption of each household is approximately 15 cubic meters. In recent years, China has seen a big growth rate in the import of LNG. The import volume in the first half of 2017 totaled 22.3 billion cubic meters, increasing 38 percent year on year.