India plans to supply liquefied natural gas to Sri Lanka’s power plants and will work on connecting the power grids of the two countries as well as lay a petroleum pipeline between the neighbours, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday.Modi was speaking at a joint press briefing with Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in New Delhi.Dissanayake is on his first official visit to Sri Lanka’s powerful neighbour after winning the presidency in September and securing a landslide parliamentary election victory last month.Indian state-run firm Petronet LNG has signed a deal to supply liquefied natural gas to Sri Lankan engineering firm LTL Holdings’ power plants in Colombo for five years through its terminal in the southern Indian city of Kochi.Both sides also discussed a plan to connect power grids and lay a multi-product petroleum pipeline between the two countries, a joint statement from the Indian external affairs ministry said.The two countries also agreed to jointly develop offshore wind power potential in the Palk Straits, an area where India’s Adani Green Energy already has plans to invest $442mn in two wind power stations.Sri Lanka is reviewing the wind power project along with a $553mn terminal project at the Colombo port also linked to Adani Ports. But it was unclear if the projects were discussed during the meeting between Modi and Dissanayake.India extended more than $4bn in aid to Sri Lanka when the island nation’s economy plunged into a severe financial crisis in 2022 and entered into a preliminary debt restructuring agreement, along with other bilateral creditors Japan and China, in July.
