GAIL India, the biggest natural gas distributor in the country, is reviving plans to procure U.S. LNG supply in the long term by either buying a stake in an American export project or signing a long-term offtake agreement, a top company official told Reuters on Monday.
“Their (Washington’s) decision to lift the ban will improve LNG supply and we will revive our plans to either buy a stake or buy U.S. LNG under long-term deals,” GAIL India’s chairman Sandeep Kumar Gupta told Reuters.
The Indian firm will decide which path to take after a tendering process for long-term LNG supply, the executive added.
As part of a wide-ranging package to “unleash American energy”, the Trump Administration last month ended the pause on LNG permitting enacted a year ago by the Biden administration.
Back in 2023, GAIL India was looking to acquire a stake in either an existing LNG export facility or one that was still in the planning stage. But the Indian firm’s plans were upended when the Biden administration halted new LNG project approvals in January 2024.
U.S. LNG supply is expected to grow in the coming years, thanks to new projects, which were fully permitted and were already under construction before the Biden pause.
The lifting of the pause is now expected to further boost America’s LNG supply.
India, for its part, is set to see a surge in natural gas demand due to population and GDP growth, as well as a shift towards cleaner energy.
India’s gas consumption is set to nearly double to 113.7 billion cubic meters (Bcm) by 2040 from 65 billion cubic meters (Bcm) in 2023, according to Rystad Energy research from October 2024.
India’s natural gas demand is set to triple by 2050 amid industry expansion and rising oil refining, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said last year.