LNG: Liquefied Natural Gas

Suppose you need to send a truckload of air to a friend overseas. Air takes up enormous space for very little weight, so shipping it as is would be absurd. Cool it down enough and it turns liquid, shrinking dramatically in volume, cheap enough to ship in bulk. That is exactly the trick behind LNG.

Natural gas, cooled to around minus 162 degrees Celsius, turns into a liquid that takes up roughly six hundred times less space than the same gas at room temperature, making it practical to load onto specialised tankers and ship across oceans to countries with no pipeline connection to the source. Once the tanker arrives, the LNG is warmed back into gas form at a regasification terminal and fed into the domestic pipeline network.

India imports a large and growing share of its natural gas as LNG, since domestic production alone falls well short of demand, and companies like Petronet LNG, GAIL and Indian Oil operate the receiving terminals that make this entire chain work. Every time a new LNG import deal is signed with a supplier such as Qatar or the United States, it is effectively locking in gas supply years in advance, since LNG contracts typically run for well over a decade.