India in talks with Russia over LNG supply resumption, GAIL says

(Reuters) - India is in talks with Russia to resume gas supplies under the long-term import deal between Gazprom and GAIL (India) Ltd, the state-run Indian company's chairman said at an annual shareholder meeting on Friday.

GAIL, India's largest gas distributor and operator of pipelines, has not received the agreed imports since May and has had to cut supplies to clients as a result.

"There are some immediate issues which we are trying to tackle both at the company level and also at G2G (government to government) level," said GAIL Chairman Manoj Jain, adding that supplies under the Gazprom deal have been hit by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Volumes under the deal were about a fifth of GAIL's overall overseas gas portfolio of 14 million tonnes a year, including supplies from the United States, Qatar and Australia, Jain said.

"So overall it is not affecting us in a significant way. The only affect is to the extent of 10-15%," he added, pointing out that the addition of domestic gas reduces the impact on local supplies to about 7-8%.

He said GAIL is scouting for more long-term gas import deals to prepare for "such eventualities in future".

GAIL agreed a 20-year deal with Russia's Gazprom in 2012 for annual purchases of an average 2.5 million tonnes of LNG. Supplies under the contract began in 2018. Gazprom Marketing and Singapore (GMTS) had signed the deal on behalf of Gazprom.

At the time, GMTS was a unit of Gazprom Germania, but the Russian parent gave up ownership of Gazprom Germania after Western sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma Editing by David Goodman)

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