_Many Japanese do not have central heating and cooling for their apartments/condos. Instead, they have ACs and space heaters, often with components outside and inside the building. Kerosene space heaters (which are common), for example, may have an exterior box, with the air inlet, burner, and exhaust units. The burner heats a liquid, and it is circulated inside to heat the home. There are variations to this.
_AC units often have a separate radiator outside, with insulated lines snaking inside to another unit. This one will have much of the rest of what you would find in a conventional windowsill AC unit.
_GTL kerosene may make for cleaner air wintertime in Japanese metro areas, especially Tokyo.

For a smaller country like Japan, natural gas can be supplied through pipelines in gaseous form and that may be more efficient than selling Kerosens in cans.

Even better may be the centralized heating from Power plants. I guess countries like France & Russia has this system.

Max Reid
There is the problem of earthquakes (that induce soil liquification) in Japan. Their cities are also often built on river plains.

Japan is at least 6000km away from Bintulu. And FYI, Bintulu is actually a province of Sarawak, Malaysia and Sarawak is part of Broneo, which is considered pretty isolated and is surrounded by rain forest. Constructing pressurised pipelines will induce heavy cost, and might induce damage to the local eco system as well. GTL technology make this isolated natural gas useful by converting the gas into liquid fuel and transport it via super tanker.

IIRC, Bintulu GTL plant is currently the world largest GTL plant. And the one under construction in Qatar will be the largest GTL plant upon completion.

Heat pump heating appliance, which in effect is an air conditioner working in reverse, heats the house with about 400% efficiency. That means for every kW electricity spent it heats the house like 4 kW of kerosene burner or conventional electrical heater.

Yes Andrey,
Until you factor in that you had to burn 6 kW worth of kerosene equivalent to generate 1 kW of electricity.

An Engineer:

It is closer to 3 kW than 6. Electricity also is generated from way cheaper fuels than kerosene, and also from nuclear/hydro.

Here in Vancouver, where 100% of quite cheap electricity comes from hydro, the economy for newly built industrial/commercial buildings is as follows: if there is NG supply line, NG is used. If there is not, in most cases it is cheaper to install heat pump. For individual houses heat pumps with geoexchange loop gains popularity quite fast.