TotalEnergies said on Monday that its co-owned Dhamra LNG terminal in the Indian state of Odisha had received its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) ahead of its commissioning, a project recently overshadowed by the allegations of fraud against partner Adani Group.
“This delivery allows for the gradual commissioning of the terminal, which is expected to start commercial operations at the end of May 2023,” the French energy giant said in a statement.
TotalEnergies has acquired the Dhamra facility and other assets from the Adani Group in a partnership deal it announced in 2019. Adani Total Pvt. Ltd., a 50-50 joint venture between TotalEnergies and Adani Group, operates the terminal on India’s east coast.
While the Dhamra project has moved towards start-up, TotalEnergies earlier said it had paused a transaction to buy an interest in Adani New Industries Limited following allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud against the Adani Group.
“With a regasification capacity of 5 million metric tonnes of LNG per annum, the Dhamra LNG terminal adds over 10% to India’s regasification capacity, strengthening the country’s position as the fifth largest importer of LNG in the world and allows it to increase the share of natural gas in India. its energy mix from 8% to 15% by 2030 to reduce its carbon intensity,” the shipping announcement said on Monday from Qatar
Thomas Maurisse, Senior Vice President LNG at TotalEnergies, commented: “India wants to develop the use of natural gas to reduce the carbon intensity of its energy mix by replacing coal, and therefore LNG can meet the growing demand internal”.
The partnership with the Adani group that TotalEnergies unveiled in 2019 involves two LNG depots and Adani Gas Ltd., “one of the top 4 city gas distributors in India of which Adani owns 74.8% and of which Total will acquire 37.4%,” the Paris-based company said in a press release on October 14, 2019. TotalEnergies will supply LNG to Adani Gas, now Adani Total Gas, as part of the agreement A joint venture with Adani Group to market LNG in India and Bangladesh is also planned.
The acquisitions resulted in a net cost to TotalEnergies of about $600 million in 2019 and 2020, TotalEnergies said in the partnership announcement.
Adani Troubles
TotalEnergies and Adani Group expanded their relationship in 2020 with the acquisition of a 20% minority stake in Adani Green Energy Ltd. (AGEL23) and a 50% stake in AGEL’s solar assets.
But TotalEnergies said it was delaying the purchase of a 25 percent stake in Adani New Industries Ltd., after India’s Supreme Court ordered an investigation into Adani Group over the Hindenburg Research revelations.
U.S.-based Hindenburg Research, which describes its work as “forensic financial research,” published on Jan. 24 what it said were the results of a two-year investigation that found the group Adani “has engaged in blatant stock manipulation and an accounting fraud scheme.” over decades”.
Adani Group said the Hindenburg Research report was not “baseless”. It said in a January 26 statement that it was examining remedial and punitive options under Indian and US laws.
An article in French newspaper Le Monde published on March 23 stated that Hindenburg Research founder Nathan Anderson “believes that TotalEnergies has ‘at best turned a blind eye and at worst been complicit’ in the ” problems” of the Adani group in relation to the manipulation of the share price of two of its subsidiaries”.
TotalEnergies dismissed the French report. He said in a statement the same day: “TotalEnergies invested in Adani Gas to develop our LNG sales in India, not to generate stock market gains. Therefore, the share price performance was never a consideration for TotalEnergies, and had no impact on the strategy or financial performance of Adani Gas as the company did not issue any new shares” when TotalEnergies bought a 37.4 percent stake in Adani Gas in 2019.
TotalEnergies previously said in a February 3 statement that its assets in Adani group companies represented just $3.1 billion or 2.4 percent of the French company’s capital employed at the end of 2022.
TotalEnergies said Adani Group’s difficulties showed no reason for the former to “halt assets in production or projects under construction” in India.
“Our investment in India is industrial, not financial,” he insisted in his response to Le Monde.
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