The Indian Oil Corporation is in talks with foreign companies for shipping liquefied natural gas for the proposed Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) Petronet LNG Ltd Kochi terminal.
IOC had bid for Petronet's shipping contract for the Dahej terminal. It had then tied up with GE Shipping and a Belgium shipping company Bxmas.
With the last date of the submitting the request for proposal documents on January 17, around 30 companies have bought the contract documents. These include Essar Shipping, Varun Shipping, AP Moller group, NYK Lines, Malaysia Petronas and Qatar Shipping.
The last date of submission of the documents was postponed from December 31, as there were some clarifications by the shipping companies to be cleared up, according to officials.
About 33 companies have evinced interest for construction of the terminal. These include Larsen & Toubro, Hyundai Engineering and a French company Scipen, and have submitted their bids.
In addition, a Japanese company that had built the company's Dahej LNG Terminal, Harima Heavy Industries Company Ltd, is also in the race.
The Kochi terminal, which had been pending for around five years, was approved by the Petronet board on October 31, 2004.
The company has already tied up an annual supply of 2.5 million tonnes of LNG supply with the national company of Qatar, Ras Laffan LNG Co Ltd for a period of 25 years.
This is for the first time that the terminal would have to keep in mind the new guidelines issued by the directorate general of Shipping, which makes it mandatory for the company transporting LNG via sea to have a 26 per cent Indian participation.
The shipping arrangement of the existing PLL terminal at Dahej in Gujarat was tied up with a consortium of 4 companies in March 2001 for 25 years with Shipping Corporation of India being the only Indian company with a 34 per cent stake.
The other three are Japanese companies including Mitsui OSK Lines, Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha Line and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd.
The Kochi terminal would come up on 40 hectares of land allocated by the Kochi Port at nearby Puthuvypeen. The company has completed all the pre-project work involving Rs 32 crore (Rs 320 million) of investment and requisite environmental clearances.
