Petronet LNG Ltd is planning to lease out a part of the LNG storage capacity from two of its Kochi LNG Terminal’s storage tanks of nearly 182,000m3 gross capacity each.
The company has invited Expression of Interest to lease storage from suppliers/operators for short to medium-term leasing of storage capacity. The Kochi regassification plant, due to lack of pipelines connecting its key demand centres in Bangalore and Mangalore, is currently operating five million tpa of liquified natural gas—a fraction of its capacity. The pipelines linking the terminal to these two cities have been delayed due to land-related issues.
The company is exploring various options including use of storage of LNG by other producers at Kochi terminal. Initially, the company would lease storage for two years.
The terminal has also a jetty with berthing and back-up facility to safely handle LNG carriers from 65,000m3 to 216,000m3 capacity and other facilities like captive gas power plant, etc.
Meanwhile, Petronet is expecting from its Australia’s Gorgon project contract of buying 1.5 million tonnes of LNG by the end of 2015.
How can you explain this state of Petronet’s LNG? Well, as Mr. David Lichtenstein says the situation isn’t that good for the management, or nothing like 2008. As he explains, it was fairly easy to foresee that Petronet will be leasing their storage units.