India to negotiate with Russia over resumption of LNG purchases

• 

India is currently in talks with Russia to resume gas supplies under the long-term import deal between Russian state energy giant Gazprom and India’s state-controlled GAIL, according to GAIL chairman Manoj Jain.

GAIL, the largest gas distributor and operator of pipelines in the country, couldn’t receive the previously agreed imports since May and was forced to cut supplies to clients as a result. 

“There are some immediate issues which we are trying to tackle both at the company level and also at G2G [government to government] level,” he said at an annual shareholder meeting on Friday.

Jain highlighted that the volumes under the Gazprom deal, which amounts to about a fifth of GAIL's overall overseas gas portfolio of 14 million tons per year, have been hit by the war in Ukraine. 

“So, overall it is not affecting us in a significant way. The only affect is to the extent of ten to 15 percent,” the top manager said, adding that the addition of domestic gas reduces the impact on local supplies to about 7-8%.

GAIL signed a 20-year deal with Gazprom back in 2012. Under the terms of the contract, the company was to purchase an average of 2.5 million tons of LNG, Liquefied Natural Gas, annually. Supplies under the contract began in 2018.

Gazprom Marketing Singapore (GMTS) had signed the deal on behalf of Gazprom. However, GMTS was a unit of Gazprom Germania, and was seized by Berlin as part of Western sanctions over Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

Read more: West desire for unipolar world caused geopolitical crisis: Lavrov

Since the war began in Ukraine, the West has been adamant to compel all nations in the world to abide by sanctions imposed on Russia.

However, Russia demonstrated persistence in global trade performance, with ongoing exchange carried out between many of whom the West considers its allies, including India which continued to purchase Russian coal. 

On 23 June, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the leaders of Brazil, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) to increase cooperation in the face of the “selfish actions” of the West. 

He said the countries "using financial mechanisms, in fact, shift their own mistakes in macroeconomic policy onto the whole world," adding that "we are convinced that now, more than ever, the leadership of BRICS countries is needed to develop a unifying, positive course towards the formation of a truly multipolar system of inter-government relations."

Many countries that defied the West's demands have been faced with increasing pressure to withdraw from their engagements with Russia.  

The latest updates reveal that Turkey has been threatened by the US over the purchase of Russian ammunitions and that Russian enterprises and the government are using Turkey to get over banking and trade sanctions imposed by the collective West against Russian following the Ukraine war. 

It was likewise reported on August 6 that Western countries are expressing "increasing concern" regarding the deepening economic cooperation between Russia and Turkey after their meeting in Sochi, Russia. 

African states have also expressed full apprehension of the reason behind the current geopolitical crisis, which is the Western attempt to establish a unipolar world.

"Our African colleagues perfectly understand the root cause of what is happening, which is the collective West’s attempt to slow down the objective historical process, the formation of a just, democratic order, and cling to the elusive prospect of the so-called unipolar world," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference on 27 July after meeting with his Ethiopian counterpart Demeke Mekonnen.

Read more: Turkey calls on France to recognize its colonial past