Liquefied natural gas deliveries from Qatar to India and Pakistan jumped 46 percent year on year due to lower demand from East Asia and higher output.
Platts’ analytics unit, Eclipse Energy shows that Qatari LNG volumes to South Asia during the January-June period reached 7,138,785 mt.
India imported 6,045,886 mt while Pakistan imported the remaining 1,092,899 mt during the first six months of 2016.
The increase of imports into India has mainly been attributed to the reworked deal between India’s largest LNG importer, Petronet and RasGas of Qatar.
In February the two companies reduced the price to around US$6 to US$7 and agreed for Petronet to import additional 1 mtpa of LNG from RasGas for further sale to Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, GAIL and Gujarat State Petroleum.
In terms of Pakistan, Qatargas agreed to deliver 3.75 million tons per annum of LNG to PSO for a period of 15 years. The first cargo under the long-term deal was delivered in March.
The volumes are to increase in the future as Qatargas recently added another deal to ship chilled gas to Pakistan. The company signed a 20-year contract with Global Energy Infrastructure (GEIL) for the delivery 1.3 mtpa of LNG per year, with the option to increase the volumes to 2.3 million tons per year.
Deliveries to East Asian countries reached 18,115,559 mt during the first half of 2016, 13 percent down compared to the same period in 2015.
In total, Qatari export of liquefied natural gas were up 3 percent compared to 2015, reaching 37,624,564 mt.
LNG World News Staff