Sanjay Kumar, currently serving as Director (Marketing) at state-owned GAIL (India) Ltd, has been appointed as the next Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Petronet LNG Ltd. Kumar will assume charge on May 13, 2027, following the completion of the extended tenure of incumbent MD and CEO A K Singh.
The appointment was approved by Petronet LNG’s Board at its meeting on October 2, according to a regulatory filing. Kumar, 59, has been appointed for a five-year term.
Kumar brings more than 35 years of experience across the natural gas and LNG value chain. A mechanical engineering graduate from IIT Kharagpur with an MBA, he joined GAIL in 1988 and has held several key responsibilities spanning gas marketing, LNG sourcing, trading, shipping, business development, transmission and pipeline project management.
He has been serving as GAIL’s Director (Marketing) since June 2023, having previously served as Managing Director of Indraprastha Gas Ltd. In 2011, Kumar was entrusted with setting up GAIL Global (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., the company’s first overseas LNG trading subsidiary, where he spent the subsequent years establishing its international market presence.
Petronet LNG is India’s largest LNG importer and operates the country’s largest LNG import terminal at Dahej in Gujarat, along with another terminal at Kochi in Kerala. The two facilities together have a regasification capacity of 27.5 million tonnes per annum (MMTPA), comprising 22.5 MMTPA at Dahej and 5 MMTPA at Kochi. The company handles around 74% of India’s LNG imports and accounts for approximately 34% of the country’s overall gas consumption.
Kumar’s appointment comes as India continues to focus on increasing the contribution of natural gas in its overall energy mix while expanding LNG import and regasification infrastructure. Petronet LNG is currently pursuing several expansion initiatives, including increasing the regasification capacity at its Dahej terminal, developing a greenfield LNG terminal on the country’s east coast and setting up a petrochemical project at Dahej.
