GAIL scouts for LNG sources, plans to grow long-term volumes by 50%

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

GAIL is planning to tie up 7-8 million tonnes per annum of long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) from diverse sources as it bets big on domestic gas demand and aims to play a leading role in India’s transformation into a gas-based economy, its chairman has said. “GAIL is committed to ensuring that the domestic demand is well supplied and protected from price shocks. To do the same, GAIL is looking to grow its long-term volumes by at least 50% or 7-8 million metric tonnes per annum in a staggered manner till 2030,” GAIL chairman and managing director Sandeep Kumar Gupta told ET in an interview. The company is in talks with suppliers in several countries including the US, Qatar, the UAE, and other countries east of India, he added. Gupta, the former finance chief of Indian Oil Corp, took over as the chairman and managing director of GAIL last October in the middle of a global energy crisis that had cut off afifth of its LNG supplies after a former German unit of Russia’s Gazprom stopped supplying. “We managed well. The supply cut to our customers was much smaller as we brought in our US volumes to meet their demand,” said Gupta. After the global markets cooled off this year, the supplies resumed but GAIL has learnt its lessons.

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“A lesson from the global energy crisis is that we probably need to diversify our portfolio further. Also, we do not intend to have more than 1-2 million tonnes per annum of incremental supply from any country.” International LNG prices have fallen sharply from their highs in 2022 but are “still unaffordable for many customers in India, especially power plants,” said Gupta, adding that the domestic demand will