Petronet LNG Ltd will sell India's first liquefied natural gas from January next at around $3.6 per million BTU (British Thermal Unit), almost the same price as that of the private domestic natural gas producers.

The LNG imports will supplement domestic natural gas which currently meets just 55 per cent of the 115 million standard cubic meters per day demand.

PLL, the consortium of Indian Oil Corporation, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Gail and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, will commission the $400 million Dahej LNG import and regassification terminal in Gujarat by December this year and receive the first shipment of LNG from Qatar in January 2004, Suresh Mathur, CEO and managing director, PLL, said in New Delhi on Friday.

"The Dahej terminal is 95 per cent complete and we will commission it in 100 days," he said, adding the ExxonMobil promoted RasGas of Qatar will supply 2.5 million tonnes of LNG at Dahej in the first year and double it from 2005.

PLL on Friday signed an agreement with RasGas to purchase LNG at a fixed price equivalent to $20 a barrel for 25 years. The price translated into a FOB price of $2.79 per million BTU. This includes shipment cost of 26 cents per million BTU. (One million tonnes LNG is equal to 52 trillion BTU).

After including the customs duty of 12 cents, regassification charges of 44 cents, pipeline transportation tariff of 32 cents and marketing margin of 10 cents, and deducting 15 cents that ONGC will pay for extracting C2/C3, the delivered price to customers would be $3.6 per million BTU.

Simultaneously, PLL also signed agreements with GAIL, IOC and BPCL for offtake of the regassified LNG.