China National Petroleum Corporation is reportedly next in line in an attempt to rework the LNG import deal terms with Qatar.
Chairman Wang Yilin, CNPC’s chairman said the company is looking for the possibility of renegotiating the pricing method with Qatar, Bloomberg reports.
Earlier in the year, India’s Petronet managed to almost halve the price of the liquefied natural gas it pays to Qatar’s RasGas under a long-term deal signed in 1999.
Wang did not reveal whether the initial deal with Qatargas has a pricing review clause.
Global supply glut has pushed the LNG spot prices to lowest levels in the last five years, making the long-term deals, that are usually linked to the crude oil, vulnerable.
Buyers have recently started looking for options to gain the upper hand in negotiations over LNG supply prices.
Jera, the joint venture of Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric, is looking to join forces with Chinese and South Korean companies and form an LNG alliance .
It was also noted that countries like India and China that have a predicted long-term demand growth for LNG could be in the best position to seek price renegotiations.
CNPC has, through its unit PetroChina, in 2010 signed a deal with Qatargas and Shell for the delivery of 3 million tons of LNG per year from Qatar to China for a period of 25 years.
LNG World News Staff