GAIL to charter LNG ships for transporting natural gas from US

SINGAPORE: GAIL (India) Ltd will be chartering six to seven LNG ships for transporting its natural gas cargoes from the US from 2017, a top company official said today.

The ships would be for transporting six million tonnes (MT) of GAIL's contracted LNG cargoes, which are on free-on- board (FoB) basis, company's Chairman and MD B C Tripathi said at a seminar on Indian energy sector at the Singapore Energy Week here.

GAIL would also be swapping its the US cargoes with those available from other destinations.

The shipping and trading would be handled by the Singapore subsidiary, GAIL Global.

Tripathi said the Singapore office would be trading its 1 MT of US LNG in the spot market.

The Singapore office would also be buying 7-8 LNG cargoes from the spot market over the next four months for India.

GAIL Singapore would be active in the spot LNG trade, buying some 34 LNG cargoes in the current fiscal year, and 34 to 35 next fiscal, he said.

GAIL bought 20 cargoes in the last fiscal year. Elaborating further, Tripathi said GAIL would participate in the entire chain of LNG from upstream to midstream and end delivery.

Tripathi stressed upon the importance of being lead player in LNG trade.

Indian companies participating at the seminar evinced interest in forming partnerships and collaborations to source LNG for the Indian markets.

The companies are also looking to gas prices delinked from crude oil-based indices.

Indian companies would also want to see the buyer-seller relationship turned into collaboration and partnerships, said Tripathi.