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The Mundra port on Wednesday berthed its first Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) cargo at its terminal, multiple sources informed. This marks the commissioning of the India’s fifth and Gujarat’s third LNG terminal, which is jointly developed by Gujarat Government-run companies and Adani Group, through GSPC LNG Limited, an SPV.
Neither the government nor the co-promoter Adani’s officially made an announcement with regards to the achievement of this major milestone. The sources in the know confirmed that a 140,000-tonne LNG cargo from Qatar Gas arrived on Wednesday morning at Mundra LNG terminal.
“The terminal will soon be functional with initial operational capacity of about 1.5-2 MTPA,” informed a source privy to the development. The LNG received at the terminal would be supplied to Gujarat State Petronet Ltd’s pipeline to feed it into the market.
Queries sent to Adani Group remained unanswered till the time of print.
The existing operational LNG terminals in Gujarat include Petronet LNG’s 17.5 MTPA terminal at Dahej and 5.2-MTPA terminal at Hazira by Hazira LNG Pvt Ltd, an arm of Shell Gas B.V.
As per the Union Petroleum Ministry’s website data, there are currently six operational LNG regassification terminals operational with capacity of about 38.8 MMTPA. Apart from the three in Gujarat, two are operational at Kochi and one at Ennore in Tamil Nadu.
The Mundra terminal was inaugurated in October 2018 by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but commercial operations couldn’t start till now. Insiders claim a dispute between the promoters had delayed the berthing of the cargo. Interestingly, last year another LNG cargo for commissioning was not allowed to berth due to differences between the promoters.
The terminal built with a total cost of approx ₹5,000 crore has a total 5 million metric tonnes per annum (MTPA) capacity for storage of LNG and sale of re-gassified LNG.
The State owns 75 per cent through different state government companies including the petroleum giant, Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC), ports regulator Gujarat Maritime Board among others, and the remaining 25 per cent is held by Adani Group.
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