Government owned Russian energy explorer, OAO Gazprom is said to be interested in and is supposedly talking to IOC for buying a stake in the proposed LNG terminal at Ennore, Chennai, according to Mint.

The Ennore LNG import terminal project, with an investment of over R4,320 Cr and a capacity of 5 Mn tonnes a year, is to come up in a 130-acre area within Ennore Port about 25 km north of Chennai.

The terminal is to be jointly developed by Indian Oil Corp. and Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corp (TIDCO).

Last year, a unit of Gazprom also signed an accord with IOC to supply 2.5 MTPA of LNG for 25 years from its projects such as Sakhalin.

Inversely state owned GAIL India had planned to buy stake in the planned 10 Mn tonne LNG plant at Vladivostok on the Pacific coast in Russia. The plant is a $7 Bn project and the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom looks to start output of LNG by 2016-2017.

In another instance of the India-Russia natural gas partnership, ONGC’s international arm OVL had shown interest in acquiring new stakes in the massive Sakahlin-3 project owned by Gazprom. OVL has a 20% stake in Sakahlin-1 project operated by ExxonMobil.

Gazprom’s intention of buying stake in the terminal could be backed by the fact that it was looking at alternate resources in the Asian region as it faces delays in Russian LNG projects.

Earlier it was in talks with Brunei LNG for possible gas purchases.

Also by the year end around 40% of its domestic contracts with energy and industrial companies are set to expire.

The fuel-starved India has only two operating LNG gasification terminals located in Gujarat and owned by Petronet LNG and Shell India.

With the demand for natural gas increasing and the projected gas production in the current fiscal being only 118.3 MSCMD (compared to 130 MSCMD last year which was 9% lower than previous year due to drop in output at Reliance Industries’ D6 field), the country is need to ramp up natural gas procurement.

GAIl was also looking to buy stake in Canadian – Canaport LNG unit put on sale by Spanish firm Repsol.

The trio of Petronet-ONGC-IOC had expressed interest in buying around 15% stake in Novatek’s Yamal LNG project also dubbed the Yamal megaproject, earlier in July.

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