GAIL (India), on Monday, announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chubu Electric Power Co. Inc. of Japan (Chubu) to explore possibilities for collaboration in the area of joint LNG procurement.

The MoU was signed during the ongoing Gastech conference being held at Seoul in South Korea. Chubu and GAIL are large LNG importers having considerable synergy between their LNG business profiles. With GAIL joining hands with Chubu for jointly pursuing LNG procurement and other allied business opportunities, it is felt that such a collaboration would augment GAIL’s efforts to aggressively source LNG volumes on competitive terms and it would be a win-win proposition for both companies.

In a statement issued here, GAIL (India) said the MoU with Chubu was an effort by GAIL towards bridging the gap in demand and supply of natural gas in the Indian market. This is in addition to other initiatives of GAIL towards LNG sourcing, creating LNG re-gasification infrastructure, reserving liquefaction tolling capacity in overseas projects and augmenting transmission capacity significantly over the next few years.

In his remarks, GAIL (India) Chairman and Managing Director B. C. Tripathi said there was enormous potential for gas demand in Asia and despite being the largest importer of LNG, the Asian market was paying premium for LNG.

He emphasised the need for developing synergies among Asian countries by promoting cross-border pipelines to bring gas from Central Asia, inter-link Asian countries through gas pipelines and also promoting Asian Co-operation Forum to address Asian Gas Grid and Asian LNG forum and Asia Hub/index.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/gail-signs-mou-with-japans-chubu-electric-for-lng-procurement/article5826608.ece