GAIL (India) will charter six to seven LNG tankers for transporting its natural gas cargoes from the U.S. starting in 2017, a top company official said Oct. 29. The ships would be used to carry GAIL’s contracted LNG cargoes, Chairman B.C. Tripathi said at a seminar on India’s energy sector at the Singapore Energy Week. GAIL has contracted to buy LNG from Cheniere Energy’s export terminal under construction at Sabine Pass, La.

GAIL also plans to swap its U.S. cargoes with those available from other destinations, in some circumstances, or trade some cargoes in the spot market. The shipping and trading would be handled by the Singapore subsidiary, GAIL Global. In addition, the Singapore office would also buy seven to eight LNG cargoes from the spot market over the next four months for India and perhaps as many as 34 spot-market LNG cargoes over the fiscal year. GAIL bought 20 cargoes in the past fiscal year.

Tripathi said Indian companies are also looking to LNG prices being delinked from crude oil-based indices. Indian companies would also want to see the buyer-seller relationship turned into collaboration and partnerships, he said.

Source: http://www.arcticgas.gov/2013/gail-india-plans-charter-lng-tankers-us-trade