GAIL looking to get LNG from United States

GAIL looking to get LNG from United StatesGAIL India Ltd. (GAIL), India's biggest natural gas distributor, is in talks with various companies to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, a top GAIL official has revealed.

P. K. Jain, finance director of GAIL, said that the company wanted to meet India's high demand for LNG through overseas purchases. As LNG prices in the Unites States are the lowest in more than thirteen years, importing gas from there would be advantageous.

In a phone interview, Jain said, "We're looking to get LNG from the U. S. because prices there are cheap. And it is affordable enough to transport it all the way to India."

Jain added that the company wanted to sign long-term contracts because India has domestic output volumes, while demand for the gas would remain high in the coming years.

GAIL is making hard efforts to revive its sales and net income as its growth almost stalled in the twelve months through 31st of March. Importing gas from the United States and selling it in India could help it a lot because the prices of the gas in the United States have dropped a whopping 81 per cent from a record high they hit in 2005.

In New York trading, which is a yardstick used to set US LNG prices, prices of natural gas slipped to an average of $2.57 per million Btu in 2012, the lowest since 1999. In December 2005, the prices hit a record high of $15.378 per million Btu.

Estimates suggest that energy demand in India will jump to more than double in less than three decades, from 21.1 quadrillion Btu in 2008 to 49.2 quadrillion Btu in 2035.