ONGC has lined up ship and storage deals to bring US ethane to its Dahej plant, including a 15-year Petronet LNG pact and two ethane carriers.

Ethane is a gas that petrochemical plants turn into raw material for plastics. ONGC Petro additions Limited, or OPaL, runs a large plant at Dahej in Gujarat that uses it as its main feedstock.

Keeping that plant supplied has led ONGC to line up storage and ships over the past year.

Start with storage. On 3 December 2025, ONGC signed a binding 15-year term sheet with Petronet LNG.

ONGC will reserve about 600 KTPA, or roughly 600,000 tonnes a year, at Petronet’s new ethane facilities in Dahej.

Services are due to start between October and December 2028. A term sheet sets the main terms before the final contracts follow.

Petronet expects about Rs 5,000 crore in gross revenue over the 15 years, according to its exchange filing. Next come the ships.

In January 2026, ONGC and Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines set up two 50:50 ventures in GIFT City, Gujarat, named Bharat Ethane One IFSC and Bharat Ethane Two IFSC.

Each will own and run one Very Large Ethane Carrier, a ship built to haul ethane across oceans.

Later that month, the ventures signed shipbuilding contracts with Samsung Heavy Industries of South Korea.

Each vessel can carry about 100,000 cubic metres. PTI reports put the pair’s combined cost at about $370 million, with US ethane imports expected from around mid-2028.

The gas itself is the open question. Petronet’s filing says ONGC plans to buy ethane on long-term, short-term and spot terms.

The sources we checked name no US suppliers and give no prices. A news report on 6 November says ONGC is negotiating long-term US deals, but we found no filing that confirms it.

Three things will show progress. One is signed supply contracts.

The next is the delivery date for the two ships, which we could not find. The last is the final storage agreement with Petronet.

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