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France-based Engie is to supply India’s first floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU), having agreed to lease the 2010-built, 145,000m³ GDF Suez Cape Ann to Mumbai-based gas firm H-Energy, to import LNG from autumn next year.
H-Energy Chief executive Darshan Hiranandani says that the FSRU, to be moored at the west coast port of Jaigarh in Maharashtra, will import its first cargoes in third-quarter 2018 and is fixed on a charter term of at least five years.
LNG World Shipping has invited Engie and shipowner Höegh LNG to confirm the deal.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) tips India as the fastest-growing importer of LNG of the coming decade. The world’s fourth-largest importer of LNG is on course to import anything between 48 mt-57.4 mt by 2030, the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies (OIES) predicts.
Engie has a live fleet of 13 LNG carriers, chartering the Höegh-owned and managed FSRUs GDF Suez Cape Ann and the 2009-built, 145,130m³ Neptune, which took position off Aliaga in Turkey in December. GDF Suez Cape Ann was previously sub-let to China National Offshore Oil Co (CNOOC).
GDF Suez Cape Ann will import up to 4 million tonnes a year (mta), Mr Hiranandani said. H-Energy will feed gas from the FSRU into a 635km coastal pipeline.
H-Energy is developing Jaigarh in two phases, building an 8 mta land-based import terminal.
It plans a second FSRU-based import project off Digha in west Bengal, having won a competitive tender from Kolkata Port Trust in 2015. The east coast terminal will import some 3 mta. According to the H-Energy website, this will be commissioned “by March 2021”.
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