Bangladesh received bids as low as around $30/MMBtu for a spot LNG tender for Feb. 12-13 delivery, as it resumes importing LNG from the spot market after nearly a three-month hiatus due to high prices, government officials said.
France’s Total offered the lowest bid, while two other suppliers, Switzerland’s AOT Trading AG and Singapore’s Vitol Asia, offered prices as high as around $35/MMBtu for one 138,000 cubic meter LNG cargo, a senior official at Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company Ltd, or RPGCL, told S&P Global Platts late Jan. 28.
Bangladesh’s cabinet committee on public purchases is likely to award the tender in its next meeting within a week. The country plans to purchase another cargo for late-February delivery, the official said, but declined to be identified.
State-owned RPGCL, which handles the country’s LNG imports, will float the tender for late-February delivery soon. The country had planned to resume spot LNG purchase from January, but exorbitant bids from suppliers forced RPGCL to cancel the previous tender.
RPGCL had received price quotes as high as around $51/MMbtu from Switzerland’s AOT Trading AG and around $40/MMbtu from Vitol Asia for January delivery, the official said, adding that currently, Petrobangla imports LNG from long-term suppliers at oil-linked prices of around $11.5/MMBtu.
The S&P Global Platts JKM for March was assessed at $29.678/MMBtu Jan. 28. It was trading over $40/MMBtu toward the end of 2021 and had dropped below $20/MMBtu in the week ended Jan. 21 but had rebounded amid concerns around the Ukraine conflict.
Limited capacity
State-run Petrobangla is currently able to utilize only one floating storage regasification unit, or FSRU, out of the country’s two units, due to a rupture in a ‘mooring line’ at Summit Group’s FSRU facility in November that suspended ship-to-ship transfers of LNG and halved the country’s overall LNG import capacity.
Bangladesh’s LNG regasification dropped to around 384,000 million cu ft/d, from the usual supply of over 800,000 Mcf/d, with only Excelerate Energy’s FSRU operational, according to Petrobangla statistics Jan. 27.
The country’s overall natural gas output also dropped to around 2.72 billion cu ft/d, from a previous supply of around 3.20 billion cu ft/d, affecting consumers, such as industries and power plants.
Around half a dozen LNG cargoes are scheduled to arrive in January from two long-term suppliers — Qatargas and Oman Trading International, or OTI.
Before ceasing spot LNG purchases, RPGCL had purchased two LNG cargoes at $35.89/MMBtu and $36.95 per MMBTU, respectively, from Vitol Asia and Gunvor during October 2021 deliveries, the highest prices the country paid for gas, indicating the severity of shortages. RPGCL purchased one LNG cargo for $28/MMBtu from Vitol Asia Pte Ltd. in September.
RPGCL’s spot purchases were as low as $4/MMBtu-$15/MMBtu in 2020, when prices reached a record low. RPGCL started importing LNG from the spot market in September 2020, two years after it initiated LNG imports from long term suppliers in September 2018.
Source: PLATTS
