GAIL scouting market for long-term tie up opportunities with LNG producers

GAIL scouting market for long-term tie up opportunities with LNG producers

GAIL (India) is scouting the market for long-term tie-up opportunities with leading global LNG (liquefied natural gas) producers to meet the growing downstream gas demand in India, the company said.

In GAIL's annual report for 2022-23, the company stated that natural gas could meet the increasing demand for clean, affordable energy with limited deployment of capital and significant impact on emissions.

GAIL mentioned that the year 2022 witnessed extreme volatility, which tested the resilience, strength, and perseverance of the company.

"The geopolitical crisis had a direct impact on your Company's operations, leading to the disruption in gas supply under one of its long-term contracts, coupled with very high volatility in the price of Spot LNG in the international market. These events made it extremely difficult for GAIL to service its customers as well as its own processing plants and petrochemical unit," said Sandeep Kumar Gupta, Chairman, and Managing Director of GAIL.

"This, in turn, resulted in supply regulations and sourcing of costly LNG from the spot market to keep contractual commitments," Gupta added.

In the financial year 2022-23, GAIL reported a decline of 55 percent in consolidated net profit compared to the previous year due to high natural gas prices. The net profit of the company stood at Rs 5,596 crore in FY23, against Rs 12,304 crore in FY22.

GAIL stated that it is strengthening its existing customer base while simultaneously working on expanding gas consumption in existing and emerging sectors.

The company also mentioned that it is exploring opportunities for ethane sourcing for its existing petrochemical plant. Additionally, GAIL has issued an EoI (expression of interest) to explore the opportunity of equity acquisition in an LNG liquefaction terminal along with a 1 MMTPA LNG tie-up from the USA, it added.