Petronet LNG Limited (PLL) intimated the exchanges on Tuesday that due to nationwide lockdown imposed by Government of India from the last week of March 2020, the off-take of RLNG from Dahej terminal had reduced. This decline in throughput was due to partial and full shutdown of a number of industries, refineries, power plants etc. which reduced their off-take of natural gas as the demand of their respective products decreased.

 

Post first week of June 2020, when the lock-down was relaxed, the demand of RLNG has seen gradual recovery and since then PLL's Dahej terminal is operating at its full capacity of 17.5 MMTPA (63 MMSCMD), the company said in the filing.

 

Before Covid-19, average send out during January - February 2020 was around 58 MMSCMD (92%) at Dahej Terminal and 3.57 MMSCMD (20%) at Kochi Terminal. The RLNG send-out prevailing during the lockdown months at Dahej was 55.59 MMSCMD in March (88.24%), 37.26 MMSCMD in April (59.14%), 49.72 MMSCMD in May (78.92%) and 62.62 MMSCMD in June (99.40%).

 

At Kochi Terminal the RLNG send-out prevailing during the lockdown months was 3.42 MMSCMD in March (19%), 2.29 MMSCMD in April (12.72%), 2.20 MMSCMD in May (12.22%) and 3.46 MMSCMD in June (19.22%).

 

Owing to Covid-19 Pandemic and consequent reduced RLNG demand during the lockdown period, PLL was constrained to invoke Force Majeure for nine (09) long-term cargos with its suppliers and discussion on the same are ongoing. During the said period, PLL also received requests under regasification contracts for deferment of third party cargos to subsequent months.