Oman’s Oil minister Mohammed bin Hamad Al Rumhi has hinted that the country is interested in taking up to 20% stake in India’s Petronet LNG planned import project.
Petronet LNG is an Indian oil and gas company which was established by the Indian government to manage importation of LNG and build LNG terminals in the country.
The company is constructing an LNG receiving and regasification facility at Gangavaram in Andhra Pradesh State. The facility will be the first of its kind on India’s east coast and will have a capacity of 5 million tonnes per annum (tpa). Petronet aims to have the terminal (which could have its capacity doubled to 10 million tpa) operational by 2018. It plans to bring in a floating storage and regasification unit to hold LNG imports in the meantime.
“We are interested in Petronet. We are looking to invest in one of their projects in east coast. We have not decided on stake. It will be small, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty per cent,” said Mohammed bin Hamad Al Rumhi, oil minister of Oman after delivering Petronet’s foundation day lecture.
He continued by saying, “We have been in discussions with Petronet for the past two months,”
Petronet LNG has been in talks with Oman, Qatar and Kuwait regarding a 5.2% minority stake sale in the consortium which is held by the Asian Development Bank. It expects Gangavaram to operate as a joint venture project in which it will retain a minimum 51% equity.
