Liquefied natural gas imports to the United States continued onthe upswing yesterday with Coral Energy’s announcement it is buyinga whopping 29 Bcf in 11 cargoes FOB from Oman LNG LLC for shipmentin 2000 and 2001. The LNG will be loaded at Oman LNG’s plant atQalhat, Sultanate of Oman, for delivery into CMS Energy Corp.’s CMSTrunkline LNG terminal in Lake Charles, LA. Coral chartered thevessel LNG Arzew from Shell Bermuda (Overseas) Ltd. to carry theLNG. Terms of the agreements were not released. A Coral spokesmansaid no other details were available about the transaction.

Coral entered the LNG import market this summer with the purchaseof a cargo from Malaysia (see Daily GPI, July 12). That shipment was 2.8 Bcf fordelivery into CMS’ facility in July. Coral also bought a cargo of 2.9Bcf from Australia’s Northwest Shelf Venture for delivery at the CMSterminal. LNG is re-gasified at the CMS terminal and then sold byCoral’s marketing and trading organization into the U.S. market.

In September, CMS Energy’s CMS Marketing, Services and Trading(CMS-MST) bought three LNG shipments from Ras Laffin LNG Co. Ltd.(Rasgas) in Qatar. The three cargoes, a combined 8.1 Bcf were to bedelivered this month, December and February to the CMS LNG complex(see Daily GPI, Oct. 6).

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