Bangladesh seeks two LNG cargoes for December delivery

Bangladesh’s state-owned Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company is seeking two liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes for delivery in December through separate tenders, two industry sources said on Thursday, reports Reuters.

It wants one cargo for delivery over Dec 22-26 in a tender closing on Nov 3 and another for Dec 9-12 in a tender closing on Nov 2, they said.

The cargo for delivery over Dec 9-12 is a re-issue of a tender that was cancelled because of high offered prices, one of the sources said.

Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company, which is in charge of Bangladesh’s LNG imports, had earlier cancelled a tender for November delivery, again citing high prices.

Asian spot LNG prices LNG-AS have jumped by more than 40 per cent since the start of the month as demand from buyers in Northeast Asia rose ahead of winter and as supply in some plants has been curbed by production issues.

“Prices in the spot market are high due to winter demand. It would be really tough to get competitive prices at the moment,” said a senior official at Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company.

“But spot prices will drop from March onwards and then we’ll review our spot LNG plan. We might seek more cargoes from spot markets.”

Bangladesh, with a population of about 160 million people, is set to become a major LNG importer in Asia as domestic gas supplies fall.

The country has two floating storage and regasification units with total regasification capacity of 1.0 billion cubic feet per day, equal to about 7.5 million tonnes a year.