LNG

French major TotalEnergies has pledged to restart the Mozambique LNG project construction in 2022 as it also expanded its Mozambican operations by completing the acquisition of BP’s retail fuel network, wholesale business and fuel import terminals at three of the southeast African nation's ports. 

French major Total has declared ‘force majeure’ on the Mozambique LNG export project over growing conflict in the north of the Southeast African nation, leading to workers being withdrawn and doubts increasing over whether security would return soon to the northern Cabo Delgado province.

The Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said it had received several complaints of alleged corruption and irregularities against senior executives of Petronet LNG, the owner of two import terminals.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in a written reply to a question in the Indian lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, that among those complained about was Petronet Chief Executive Prabhat Singh.

The Minister said that the complaints against the CEO and other executives had been forwarded to the Chairperson of Audit Committee of Petronet for appropriate action. 

Petronet shares are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and fell 5.5 percent on March 24 to 179.20 rupees after the allegations were made and had been at 189.70 rupees at the previous close.

The shares have declined in the past six months along with other energy stock and had reached a 52-week high of 302 rupees on the 23rd of September 2019.

Petronet is India’s largest LNG importer and CEO Singh has been at the helm since September 2015. 

His five-year term comes to an end in six months from now and he is eligible for a two-year extension of service until he achieves the age of 65 years. 

“Several complaints have been received in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas against MD & CEO, PLL and other officers of PLL regarding alleged corruption-irregularities,” said the official statement.

Asked if the government has conducted any audit of the accounts of Petronet regarding the irregularities during the last three years, the Minister said that Petronet was board-managed company and not a government company as per the Companies Act.

Petronet currently operates India’s busiest regasification facility at Dahej, north of Mumbai, with 17.5 million tonnes per annum of capacity and six storage tanks. 

The company was formed by the Government of India in 1998 specifically to import LNG and will be expanding its interests in the years ahead into areas such as fuel distribution.

Shareholders in Petronet, which began operations in 2004 are individual investors while stakes of 12. 5 percent are also held by each of the largest Indian energy players, Gas Authority of India, Indian Oil Corp., Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp.

Petronet’s Dahej import terminal is operating at full capacity while its second terminal at Kochi, in the southwest state of Kerala ,operates at just 18 percent of capacity because of a lack of regional gas infrastructure.

Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) is to invest Rs1,500- Rs1,700 crore in an FSRU to be located at Krishnapatnam, Andra Pradesh state, as an LNG receiving terminal. 

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. of the US has formally given the final investment decision and go-ahead for $20 billion of liquefied natural gas export project spending in Mozambique ahead of the Houston, Texas-based company’s takeover by Occidental Petroleum.

Anadarko Petroleum, the US company that has agreed to be taken over by Occidental Petroleum and whose liquefied natural gas assets will be sold to French major Total, has awarded the main engineering contract for the onshore Mozambique LNG plant to a consortium of companies from Italy, the US and Japan.

India attracted 110 bids for its first open-acreage round for oil and natural gas exploration and production licences for 55 blocks onshore and offshore as the nation also continued to build its LNG import volumes to meet rising demand and to expand energy infrastructure.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp, the US oil and natural gas producer onshore and in the Gulf of Mexico, posted a first-quarter net profit as it also made continued progress on the Mozambique LNG export project in southeast Africa.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the US energy company and main stakeholder in the planned onshore Mozambique LNG export plant in southeast Africa, said it received approval from the government for its gas fields development plan.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., one of the main participants in projects to develop liquefied natural gas production in Mozambique, said the project joint venture had made “meaningful progress” in an agreed citizen resettlement process to prepare an onshore location for the construction of the large-scale liquefaction and export plant.