07 April 2014, News Wires – Oman is keen to take up to a 20% stake in Petronet LNG planned Gangavaram liquefied natural gas import project on India’s east coast, according to Oman’s oil minister Mohammed bin Hamad Al Rumhy.
“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,” he said after delivering Petronet’s foundation day lecture.
“We have been in discussions with Petronet for the past two months,” he was quoted by India’s news agency PTI.
Petronet is constructing a 5 million tonnes per annum LNG receiving and regasification facility at Gangavaram, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which will be the first such project on India’s east coast.
The company is aiming to have the terminal, which could have its capacity doubled to 10 million tpa, in initial operations in 2018.
Before the onshore project is completed, Petronet plans to bring in a floating storage and regasification unit to handle LNG imports over the next few years.
Petronet LNG, itself a consortium, intends to progress Gangavaram as a joint venture project in which it wants to retain a minimum 51% equity.
“Eight per cent stake has already been taken by Gangaravam Port and we are willing to take on strategic partners,” said Petronet finance director R K Garg.
Petronet LNG is understood to last year have had talks with Oman, Qatar and Kuwait regarding the sale of the 5.2% minority stake in the consortium that is held by the Asian Development Bank.
– Upstream