Pertamina Eyes LNG Sales to Bangladesh
Indonesia’s Pertamina could start exporting LNG to the emerging Bangladesh market next year as the energy ministers of the two countries inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) over LNG trades September 15 in Jakarta, a spokesman for Bangladesh’s ministry of power, energy and mineral resources told NGW.
This is Bangladesh's fourth LNG supply agreement, and second in this month. After inking the first-ever MOU to import LNG with Qatar in 2011, Bangladesh inked MOUs with Switzerland-based AOT Energy on June 13 and with Oman in early September.
Bangladesh’s state energy minister Nasrul Hamimd inked the MOU with Indonesia’s energy and mineral resources minister Igansius Jonan, the spokesman said, and state-run Petrobangla will initiate negotiation with Indonesia’s Pertamina soon to fix up the volume, price and specification of the LNG to be imported.
Bangladesh might also start importing at least 1mn mt/year of lean LNG from Pertamina by 2018 under a term deal, said a senior Petrobangla official.
Petrobangla is expected to ink Bangladesh’s first-ever final deal to import LNG with Qatar's RasGas on September 25 aiming to buy 2.5mn mt/year of lean LNG from Qatar's RasGas over 15 years a price almost three-times the weighted average domestic natural gas price of Bangladesh, the chairman Abul Mansur Md Faizullah said earlier.
The LNG purchase price has been set at around 12.65% of the three-month average Brent crude prices plus $0.50 constant/mn Btu, said a senior ministry official. At current level the LNG price would be around $6.5/mnn Btu, he added, almost three-times the weighted average price of natural gas price in Bangladesh at $2.19/mn Btu.
The RasGas supply will take up a third of Bangladesh's LNG handling capacity of 7.5mn mt/year, which will be ready following the 2018 commissioning of two floating, storage and regasification units. Bangladesh is also looking to import LNG under spot contracts, taking advantage of the relatively low price.
The country's first LNG import terminal, a 3.75mn mt/year FSRU being developed by US-based Excelerate Energy, is expected to be commissioned in April 2018 and its second, also with a capacity of 3.75mn mt/year, being developed by Summit Group, is expected to be commissioned by end-2018.
M Azizur Rahman