Royal Dutch Shell has imported its second spot shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) this fiscal, industry sources said. Shell received a LNG cargo from Qatar at its Hazira terminal in Gujarat, they said.

Qatar Gas, a natural gas company of Qatar, sold the shipment to Petronet at about US $5.20 per million British thermal units. This price is before levy of 5 per cent customs duty, regasification charges, local taxes and margins. The company had imported a cargo at US $4.93 per mmBtu in early April. The state backed Petronet LNG, has not imported any shipment from the spot market since December. The flooding of gas from Reliance Industries’ eastern offshore KG-D6 field, coupled with no spare capacity in GAIL India’s pipeline network that transports gas to users in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, had cramped out spot LNG purchases.

As a result, Petronet did not bring its own spot supplies since December, though Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC) has imported two cargoes at Dahej. GSPC has its own pipeline network in Gujarat to evacuate gas to customers.

GSPC had contracted nine cargoes at the prevalent rate of the Henry Hub of US plus US $1.5 per metric million British thermal unit. Out of these two cargoes were imported in April and May. Petronet currently is only getting LNG under its long-term contract of 7.5 million tonnes a year with RasGas of Qatar. It may resume purchases from the spot market in the second half of 2010, after new pipelines are commissioned. India’s LNG imports in 2009 rose 9.2 per cent to 8.93 million tonnes.                                                                                                                                                    Agencies

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