PM to inaugurate Kochi LNG terminal on 4 Jan

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will on Saturday dedicate to the nation a Rs 4,200 crore liquid natural gas (LNG) import terminal at Kochi in Kerala. Petronet LNG Ltd, India's largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), had in August commissioned the 5 million tonnes a year LNG import and regasification facility at Kochi. The prime minister will dedicate the terminal to the nation at a function at Puthuvypu in Kochi on Saturday afternoon, official sources said in New Delhi.[caption id="attachment_1316679" align="alignleft" width="380"] Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Image courtesy PIB[/caption]Currently, Petronet has an import and regasification terminal at Dahej in Gujarat with a capacity of 10 million tonnes per annum and is setting up a 5 million tonnes per year terminal on the east coast. LNG is natural gas cooled to minus 160 degrees Celsius (minus 256 degrees Fahrenheit), shrinking the fuel to about 1/600th of its original size for transportation in ships. Sources said Petronet has so far imported two ship loads of LNG at the Kochi terminal. The Kochi terminal will operate at 8 per cent of capacity in the first year of operations because pipelines to take gas to customers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are not ready. In the second year, the terminal is expected to operate at 75 percent capacity, when pipelines connecting Kochi with Mangalore and Bangalore are built. Also, state-owned GAIL India plans to connect this pipeline to Chennai. Sources said gas from Kochi is being supplied to the state-run Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT), Bharat Petroleum Corp's Kochi refinery and Nitta Gelatin India Ltd. With availability of pipeline network, Kochi LNG terminal, in coming times, can cater to the needs of refinery, petrochemical, fertiliser, power, steel, transportation and city gas distribution in states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, they said.At least 70 percent of the total capacity, or 3.5 million tonnes per year, is required for the terminal to function at minimum optimum efficiency.Petronet currently imports LNG from the spot market. It will get 1.3 million tonnes of LNG from Australia's Gorgon project in 2015-16 under a 20-year deal signed in August 2009. State-owned gas utility GAIL, refiners Indian Oil Corp and Bharat Petroleum, and explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp each own a 12.5 percent stake in Petronet. PTI