"We get the sense that China National Offshore Oil Corp expects demand to develop," Akehurst said in a report in The Australian newspaper.

"We have made it very clear that we are in a position to deliver these volumes and to expand the current arrangements to cover them.

"As the major supplier to the Guangdong terminal we would hope we would have a natural starting point which would lead us to compete effectively for the additional volumes."

Last year, in what was Australia's biggest ever foreign deal, China agreed to purchase 3.2 million tonnes of LNG per year from the NWS joint venture over 25 years worth $25 billion.