Essar consortium bags Haldia terminal project, set to enter LNG business

Essar Ports, a part of the Essar group, has won the bid for the development of an LNG terminal with associated storage and distribution facilities at the Haldia Dock Complex under the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) in consortium with Ultra LNG and Essar Shipping. With this, the Essar group has entered the liquefied natural gas business. Other bidders competing for the project were Petronet LNG and V Energy.

Essar group is likely to invest an estimated amount of Rs 425-450 crore on the completion of the project, scheduled to be commissioned in two years. The project is estimated to have a minimum guaranteed traffic of 0.2 million tonnes (mt) per annum with a tenure period of 30 years.

Further, Essar has strategically planned to add floating storage and re-gasification capacity to its units by incurring a cost of nearly Rs 4,000 crore, increasing its capacity to 200 MTPA in the coming years, along with an increase in the capacity of the terminals by 1 million tonnes.

The company also recorded an increase of 25 per cent in the growth of its cargo traffic in 2016-17. The consolidated cargo handling increased by 14.59 million tonnes in FY17 as compared to 58.27 million tonnes in FY16. The dry bulk cargo also witnessed a growth of 52 per cent at 30.39 MT in FY17.

On April 13, 2017, the Essar Port stock was trading at Rs 130.70, up by 0.15 per cent on the BSE.