Petronet LNG has appointed GAIL (India) Director (Marketing) Sanjay Kumar as its next Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, placing an experienced natural gas executive at the helm of India’s largest liquefied natural gas importer as the company prepares to expand its regasification and downstream infrastructure.
Kumar will take charge on May 13, 2027, when the extended tenure of the current chief executive, A K Singh, ends. Petronet’s board approved the appointment at a meeting on October 2, according to a regulatory filing cited by Business Standard. Kumar, 59, will serve a five-year term.
The appointment brings a senior GAIL executive to a company whose operations are central to India’s imported-gas network. Petronet operates the country’s largest LNG import terminal at Dahej in Gujarat and another terminal at Kochi in Kerala. Its current regasification capacity is 27.5 million tonnes per year, including 22.5 million tonnes at Dahej and 5 million tonnes at Kochi.
Petronet says it handles about 74 per cent of India’s LNG imports and accounts for approximately 34 per cent of the country’s gas supplies. Regasification converts LNG received in liquid form into natural gas that can enter the pipeline system for use by industries, power producers, city gas distributors and other consumers.
Kumar has served as GAIL’s director for marketing since mid-June 2023. A mechanical engineer from IIT Kharagpur with an MBA, he has more than 35 years of experience across the natural gas and LNG value chain. His current role at GAIL includes experience in the marketing and distribution side of the gas business, while his new position will cover the management of major import and regasification assets.
Petronet is majority owned by four state-owned oil companies: Indian Oil Corporation, GAIL, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation. Each holds a 12.5 per cent stake. The heads of the four companies also sit on Petronet’s board.
Although Petronet is majority owned by state-owned oil firms and is headed by the government’s top bureaucrat in the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, it is registered as a private limited company. The company’s executives retire at 65, compared with the superannuation age of 60 in public sector companies. Business Standard reported that Petronet is outside the oversight of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Central Vigilance Commission and is beyond the purview of the Right to Information Act.
Kumar’s appointment comes as India seeks to increase the share of natural gas in its energy mix and add LNG import and regasification infrastructure. Petronet is pursuing an expansion of its Dahej capacity, a greenfield LNG terminal on India’s east coast and a petrochemicals project at Dahej. The leadership transition will take effect when Singh’s extended term concludes on May 13, 2027.
