India, Qatar Discuss LNG

Indian petroleum and natural gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan met with Qatar Petroleum CEO Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi in Doha September 12 to discuss further strengthening cooperation in the hydrocarbons sector, including LNG.

“We discussed the existing arrangements for the purchase of LNG from Qatar and agreed to work beyond the buyer-seller relationship in the hydrocarbon sector. We also discussed to collaborate with Qatar to develop an energy-efficient environment to transform India into a gas-based economy,” Pradhan said on Twitter.

Pradhan said he highlighted India’s efforts of transforming into a gas-based economy and enhancing the share of gas in the energy mix. The minister invited Qatar based companies to invest in India specially in the areas of LNG, city gas distribution, biofuel and natural gas.

Qatar is India’s biggest supplier of LNG. In 1999, India state-owned Petronet LNG signed a long-term deal to import 7.5mn metric tons/year of LNG from RasGas (merged with Qatargas in January 2018). In late-2015, the two companies agreed on a new deal under which Petronet LNG would import additional 1mn mt/yr of LNG, taking the total annual long-term commitment to 8.5mn mt/yr.