Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
India to buy Iran LNG for $800 M a year
By siliconindia staff writer
|
Tuesday, 01 June 2004, 19:30 IST
SINGAPORE: India will buy five million tonne of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year from Iran for $800 million per year under a 20-year contract from 2010, a top official from Petronet LNG Ltd said on Monday.
An initial agreement was signed about a month and a half ago between state-run gas firm GAIL Ltd and National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC), said chief executive officer and managing director of Petronet, Suresh Mathur.
"This contract will be worth around $800 million per year," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a gas conference in Singapore.
Mathur said all the gas would be processed by Petronet, founded by state-run energy firms GAIL India Ltd, the country's largest gas distributor, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd, the largest crude oil producer, Indian Oil Corporation, the largest refiner, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.
A senior Iranian oil official said in April, Iran hoped to start exporting LNG within eight years.
Iranian oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has said Iran was eyeing Asian markets for its LNG, particularly India.
In February, state-owned NIOC announced the creation of PARS LNG, in which French energy major Total SA and Malaysia's Petronas hold key stakes.
PARS LNG aimed to produce eight million tonne per year of LNG and start production by 2009.
Iran holds the world's second-largest natural gas reserves but has been slow to develop LNG, gas cooled to a liquid state for loading onto tankers.
Neighbouring Qatar is already producing 15 million tonne of LNG a year, developing gas from its huge North Field which shares the same reservoir as Iran's South Pars.
Mathur said India would be looking for another five million tonne a year of gas to be supplied sometime from 2007-08, which would also be a 20-year contract, partly for the expansion of the Petronet terminal and partly for another terminal in the south.
The Petronet terminal at Dahej in Gujarat, has capacity of five million tonne a year and is being expanded to 10 million tonne by 2007, he said.
Asked where India would be seeking the gas from, Mathur said: "Either Australia, Malaysia or Indonesia, but for us it should be price competitive in the sense of competitiveness to supply in the (Middle East) Gulf.