On 26th February, 2014, GAIL (India) Ltd announced that it is seeking Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) from East African producers to diversify its supply sources.
“We are trying to spread our portfolio of LNG supplies geographically and indices wise (and) we are looking at the East African suppliers, company’s Marketing Director Prabhat Singh said at the LNG Supplies for Asian Markets 2014 conference. He further added that the new supplies were being sought at prices of around US $ 12 per million British thermal units.
GAIL has the best price contract with US-based LNG suppliers, which was at less than US $ 12 per mmbtu on Free on Board basis. The 6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) supply from US was expected to commence from 2018. Currently, GAIL gets 7.5 mtpa from the Middle East suppliers. It has also firmed two contracts for 2.5 mtpa supplies by Gazprom for Russian LNG from 2018-19 and 1.5 mtpa supplies from Australia’s Gorgon project, starting 2015. GAIL’s contracts are based on the US’ Henry Hub, Japan Crude Cocktail and Brent indices. It is now looking for contracts based on North Myrtle Beach (NMB) index.
