Iran and India: No agreement on LNG prices
New Delhi: India and Iran have failed to reach an agreement on the price of five million tonnes of LNG which New Delhi plans to import in lieu of Tehran offering stake in a discovered oil field.

While Iran has made an offer price of $2.22 per million British Thermal Unit (btu), India in turn are not willing to pay more than $1.85 per million btu. After two days of deliberations, the two sides have agreed to form two committees to look into pricing of LNG and the terms for offering the oil field to Indian firm.

The committee, which will go into the pricing of LNG, will comprise Iranian Deputy oil minister M H Nejad Hosseinien, IOC Director (Business Development) Naresh K Naiyar and GAIL Director (Planning) B S Negi. The composition of the other committee is yet to be decided. The two committees are expected to submit their recommendations by August 15.
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GOI Secretaries reshuffled
New Delhi: In the first major bureaucratic reshuffle by the new UPA government, Home Secretary Anil Baijal and Defence Secretary Ajay Prasad, recent appointees of the previous NDA regime, were shifted to other Ministries. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, has appointed Baijal as the new Urban Development Secretary while Prasad has been moved as Civil Aviation Secretary.

While Disinvestment Secretary Dhirendra Singh will be the new Home Secretary, Ajay Vikram Singh, Secretary Road Transport and Highways, will be the new Defence Secretary. The Foreign Office will also have a new spokesman in Dalip Sinha, Deputy High Commissioner in Dhaka, who will replace Navtej Sarna. Sarna moves to South Block as Joint Secretary, Disarmament.
Mr. Dhirendra Singh, IAS officer of the 1968 batch of Karnataka cadre, was Secretary, Disinvestment in the NDA Government. He will have a rather short tenure of about nine months as the Home Secretary as he will attain the age of superannuation in March 2005. Ajai Vikram Singh of the 1967 batch briefly served as Revenue Secretary under Jaswant Singh in the Union Finance Ministry. Sushil Chandra Tripathi will be the new Petroleum Secretary. He will fill up the vacancy caused by the promotion of his predecessor, B.K. Chaturvedi, as Cabinet Secretary. Tripathi belongs to U.P. cadre.

Anugrah Narayan Tiwari from the 1969 batch of the Andhra Pradesh cadre will be the new Secretary, Personnel. He will replace Arun Bhatnagar who retires tomorrow but has been appointed as Secretary, Advisory committee on Common Minimum Programme. R. Poornalingam, Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, is being appointed Secretary, Disinvestment Department in the Ministry of Finance. He belongs to the 1979 batch of the Tamil Nadu cadre.
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Shujaat Hussain is new Pakistan Prime Minister
Islamabad: Chawdhary Shujaat Hussain, Chief of the ruling military-backed PML-Q party, was today elected Pakistan's new Prime Minister. His elevation to the top post follows Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali's resignation.
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Bids for Kochi LNG terminal to open on July 21
Kochi: Global energy majors, Shell, Gaz de France (GDF) and Petronas, and domestic companies, ONGC, Petronet LNG Ltd and GAIL (India), are in the fray for supplying liquefied natural gas (LNG) to National Thermal Power Corporation's proposed capacity expansion at the Kayamkulam unit.

The technical bids will be opened on July 21, before inviting the price bids. The successful bidder for supplying gas to NTPC Kayamkulam will set up the proposed LNG terminal at Kochi.
NTPC is planning to generate an additional 1,950 MW of electricity at the Kayamkulam unit by using LNG. The unit has an existing capacity to produce 350 MW of electricity. The Kayamkulam unit currently uses naphtha to generate power, leading to high cost of electricity for the end users. The Kochi LNG Terminal, which will have a minimum of 2.5 million tonne capacity, would entail an investment of Rs 1,600-1,700 crore.
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