Gazprom's former Singapore unit misses GAIL delivery: press

Gazprom's Singapore arm missed an LNG shipment to Indian state-owned gas supplier GAIL, Reuters reported July 19.

The cause of the missed shipment was unclear, but is likely to be related to scarce global LNG fuel supplies, with European demand rising sharply higher due to Nord Stream's maintenance programme, and downscaling at other Gazprom piped routes across European markets.

GAIL in 2012 signed a 20-year offtake agreement with Gazprom to buy 2.5mn metric tons/year of LNG. The deal was signed by GMTS on behalf of Gazprom, but remained inactive until 2018 when GAIL began accepting liftings under the sales agreement, Reuters said. For Asian LNG customers, the JKM spot price for July 18 settlement of August contracts amounted to $39.081/mn Btu.

Gazprom Marketing and Trading Singapore is officially a subsidiary of Gazprom Germania, though the latter division is now under the control of the German government. Berlin's takeover of Gazprom Germania was intended to prevent it collapsing as European customers cancelled contracts in light of the Ukraine conflict.

One of Reuters' sources said GMTS's position was "tight" given earlier LNG defaults on the GAIL contract, making it possible it will fail to meet the terms of its Indian supply agreement and would be forced to declare force majeure.

Gazprom has already declared force majeure on gas deliveries to at least one major European customer, according to an official company letter dated July 14 and seen by Reuters on July 18.  Reuters has claimed the force majeure concerns gas flows via the Russia - Germany Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which also delivers Russian gas to other major markets in central Europe.