New Delhi: State gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd will start receiving LNG under a five-year 12 cargoes per year deal from Qatar Energy Trading from next month as it augments sourcing to meet rising demand of the world’s fastest growing economy.
“Purchases under the deal will start from April,” GAIL chairman and managing director Sandeep Kumar Gupta said.
GAIL had in December last year awarded a liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchase tender for procuring 12 cargoes per year starting in April 2025 for a tenure of five years to Qatar Energy Trading. Besides the Qatar Energy deal, GAIL has in recent months signed long-term LNG procurement deals with suppliers. It has inked a long-term deal with commodity trader Vitol Asia for around 1 million tonne a year for a period of about 10 years, commencing 2026. Under this deal, Vitol will deliver LNG from its global LNG portfolio to GAIL in India on a pan-India basis.
GAIL has also signed a long-term deal to purchase around 0.5 million tonne a year of LNG from the UAE’s ADNOC Gas from 2026 onwards for 10 years across India. The deals will help in meeting India’s rising energy needs and are in line with India’s ambition of enhancing the share of natural gas in the energy basket to 15 per cent by 2030 from the current levels of around 6-7 per cent. IOC has also signed binding heads of agreement deals with ADNOC LNG and TotalEnergies. IOC’s deal with ADNOC LNG is for 14 years for 1.2 million tonne a year and with TotalEnergies for 10 years for 800,000 tonne per year.
Gupta said GAIL is looking at medium and long-term LNG contracts to cater to the increasing downstream demand in India and supply natural gas to various sectors.
He however did not disclose pricing and commercial details of the deal. The company has an existing LNG portfolio of 14 million tonne per annum which is well diversified among various indexes. Till 2030, GAIL will source additional 7-8 million tonne per annum of LNG through long/mid-term contracts (2.25 million tonne already signed).