NEW DELHI: GAIL India has swapped 60 per cent of the 5.8 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas (LNG) it has contracted from the US as it reworks supply portfolio in line with domestic demand.
The public-sector gas major has also indicated that power utilities have stepped up natural gas buying in the past few days to make up for acute coal shortage at various electricity generation plants in the country.
“In all, 3.5 million tonnes of LNG has been swapped,” GAIL Chairman and Managing Director B C Tripathi told reporters after the after company’s shareholders' meeting. Tripathi said GAIL is working on more swap deals for US LNG.
He said time-swapped volumes have started arriving in India but did not give any details.
“Innovative contracting structures such as time swap, destination swap and shipping optimisation have been executed as measures to market LNG volumes,” he told shareholders.
GAIL had contracted LNG from the US to meet the demand of growing Indian economy with the power sector being considered as a major buyer.
Meanwhile, power producing companies like NTPC have stepped up natural gas buying in the past few days. “In the past couple of days, 10 million standard cubic metres per day of additional gas has been purchased by power companies,” said Tripathi.
“Natural gas is good to meet peaking load demand. It takes very less time compared to coal for a start-up or shutdown,” Tripathi said.
Besides, it is a cleaner and environment-friendly fuel. Natural gas should be included in the goods and services tax regime and tax incidence brought down to 5 per cent from current 20-30 per cent to promote its usage, feels Tripathi.
Power generation capacity
The gas purchased is good enough to generate 2,000 Mw of electricity. India has 3,29,226.27 Mw of installed electricity generation capacity. Of the total, 25,185 Mw is based on gas.Of these, 14,305 Mw are technically ‘stranded’ — fully or partly due to want of gas at competitive rates.