The push is driven by the gap between spot and long-term prices. “Hopefully, we are trying to get it earlier, because once the situation normalises, there is a lot of appetite for long-term volume in the country,” managing director Akshay Kumar Singh told reporters at a post-earnings press conference on Monday. “You know what the spot price is and what the long-term price is. There is a huge gap. So efforts are there to get some more cargo, and the talk is going in a positive direction.”     Qatar, however, is not in a position to commit to a timeline. “We have been talking with them, but they are not in a position to commit. How can they commit when the situation is not conducive?” Singh said.    QatarEnergy halted LNG production and declared force majeure to affected buyers in early March, after attacks linked to the war involving Iran targeted Qatar’s energy infrastructure. Petronet responded by issuing force majeure notices to its own downstream buyers. Eight months on, Singh said, everyone is still awaiting normalisation.     Qatar has not moved to change the origin of supply. “We have been in discussion for restoring the supply as soon as the situation normalises, and there are all indications that they are willing to supply the quantity they have committed to us,” he said.     If early delivery does not materialise, the contract’s force majeure mechanism gives Qatar one year after the contract ends to make good the shortfall. That recovery period runs from 1 May 2028 to 30 April 2029.    The same window covers roughly 53 to 54 older cargoes still owed to Petronet under a 2015-16 settlement agreement with Qatar. All of these will be priced on the existing long-term formula. “That is the comfort, that you need not negotiate any price. It is a part of the same contract,” Singh said.     The current contract dates to 1999 and expires in April 2028. In February 2024, Petronet announced a 20-year renewal with QatarEnergy covering 7.5 million tonnes per annum from May 2028 to December 2048.     The structural change is in who carries the voyage. Petronet currently buys Qatari LNG on a free-on-board basis, meaning it arranges shipping and takes title at the loading port. The new contract is on a delivered ex-ship basis, shifting that obligation — and the associated risk — to the supplier.     This year’s crisis illustrated the difference. “It is not only the cost of the molecule. It is also the war premium, which is substantially high, and those risks will definitely be transferred to the supplier when it is a DES cargo,” Singh said.     Singh declined to disclose the pricing formula but said the terms are better than the current arrangement.     Singh defended Qatar’s record, noting that many long-term contracts were breached in the early phase of the Russia-Ukraine war when suppliers sought loopholes to sell cargoes at higher prices. “But we did not find a single default from the Qataris during the entire Ukraine-Russia crisis,” he said.     Even so, Hormuz has changed how buyers assess supply. “Price should not be the only criterion. You must have in mind the security of supply, reliability of supply, geography,” Singh said, adding that shipping routes from Hormuz and the Suez Canal to the Panama Canal and the Cape of Good Hope now form part of that assessment.   

 At the receiving end, Petronet’s Dahej terminal has kept running on alternative volumes. The ExxonMobil contract for Australian LNG has been unaffected, and third-party capacity holders at the terminal are bringing in cargoes from other sources. Utilisation is lower against the terminal’s expanded capacity, Singh said, but “volume-wise, more or less we are in the same range.