Tokyo Gas Co, Japan’s biggest city gas supplier, said on Thursday it signed a contract with Mitsui & Co to buy about 520,000 tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year from the Cameron project in the United States for about 20 years from 2020.

Tokyo Gas will buy at U.S. natural gas Henry Hub index-linked prices and the destinations for the eight cargoes to be lifted per year can be changed flexibly if the two firms agree, the company said.

LNG imports by Japan, the world’s top buyer of the super-cooled fuel, have jumped since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with utilities looking to boost supplies from North America to diversify supply sources and lower costly LNG import prices.

Based on the current Henry Hub price of roughly $4 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), the total import price from the project will be about 20 to 30 percent lower than similar imports from its main suppliers, Australia and Indonesia, Tokyo gas company officials said.

This marks the second purchase of U.S. LNG for Tokyo Gas, which has already agreed to buy 1.4 million tonnes per year from the U.S. Cove Point project.

GDF Suez said last month U.S. regulators gave the green light for the Cameron project, paving the way for a final investment decision by its sponsors.

Mitsui & Co, which has a 16.6 percent stake in Cameron project and will procure a total 4 million tonnes per year from the project, is also set to supply the U.S. gas to Tokyo Electric Power Co, Tohoku Electric, Kansai Electric Power Co and Toho Gas Co.

A spokesman for Mitsui said the company cannot disclose if there were still some Cameron LNG volumes that remained unsold.

Source: Reuters (Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Anupama Dwivedi)