India paid $1.2 billion for its LNG imports in June, a rise of 50 percent year-on-year, while monthly volumes continue to drop, according to preliminary data from the oil ministry’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell.
LNG imports in June declined by 9.5 percent to 2.45 billion cubic meters, or about 1.80 million tonnes, the data shows. They also dropped compared to the previous month.
During April-June, India took 7.40 bcm, or some 5.43 million tonnes, down by 9.6 percent when compared to the same period last year, PPAC said.
India paid $3.4 billion for April-June LNG imports, up from $2.4 billion last year.
On the other side, natural gas production in June increased by 1.3 percent to 2.81 bcm. Gas production rose by 4.7 percent in April-June to 8.55 bcm.
India’s monthly LNG imports have been constantly dropping this year due to mostly high spot prices.
Asian spot LNG prices remained high during this entire year and they further rose this month due to reduced flows of Russian gas in Europe and the Freeport LNG outage.
The JKM LNG price currently trades at more than $38 per MMBtu for September.
At the moment, India imports LNG via six facilities with a combined capacity of about 42.7 million tonnes.
Petronet LNG’s 17.5 mtpa Dahej terminal operated at 83.8 percent capacity while Shell’s 5 mtpa Hazira terminal operated at 36.1 percent capacity in May, PPAC said.