Monday, April 24 2006 13:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Dubai: India plans to buy more Liquefied Natural Gas from Qatar and will expand the capacity of its Dahej LNG terminal to 10 million tonnes a year from the present five million tonnes.

The plan to buy more LNG was discussed at a meeting between India's Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora and Qatar's Deputy Premier and Minister of Energy and Industry H E Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah.

"It was a fruitful meeting," Deora told the 'The Peninsula' newspaper yesterday adding that he discussed the LNG purchase.

Qatar (RasGas) was already supplying five million tones of LNG annually to India (Petronet LNG) and it had made an additional commitment for 2.5 million tonnes.

"India, however, wants 2.5 million tonnes LNG more in future," Abdullah bin Hamad said. "Since the situation at RasGas is very tight due to its existing supply commitments, it is difficult to make a commitment to India for the extra 2.5 million tonnes," he said.

India should, however, keep talking to RasGas, he said. "We are loyal to our buyers," he added. India's petroleum secretary M S Srinivasan had said that India had earlier wanted 2.5 million tonnes of LNG annually for the Kochi terminal.

"This LNG (2.5 million tonnes) we want to take to Dahej now as the terminal's capacity is being doubled to 10 million tonnes per annum," he said.