(Reuters; May 26) – State-owned gas distribution firm GAIL (India) aims to sign more deals for U.S. liquefied natural gas exports. Meanwhile, it hopes to lock-in customers by the end of July for the U.S. gas it already has contracted to buy. Going forward, the firm will change its strategy for new overseas deals, said Prabhat Singh, GAIL’s marketing head. “For future deals with the U.S., we will sign back-to-back agreements with the buyers and sellers instead of first striking deals and then looking for customers.”
GAIL already has deals to take a combined 5.8 million metric tons of LNG per year (about 280 billion cubic feet of gas) from the Cheniere LNG plant under construction at Sabine Pass, La., and the Dominion Resources project proposed for the Maryland shore. The company is in talks with customers in India to take the gas, with deliveries to start in 2017-2018. “We are selling largely to city gas distribution companies, steel, textile and ceramics as well as refineries,” GAIL Chairman B. C. Tripathi said.
GAIL will float a tender next month to charter six to eight LNG carriers for shipping gas from the U.S. to India, Tripathi said. Separate from what it can sell at home, GAIL hopes to trade 1 million metric tons a year of its U.S. LNG through its trading arm in Singapore.

Source:Source: Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects