Asian Development Bank and the ExxonMobil-promoted RasGas of Qatar have taken 10 per cent equity each in Petronet LNG Ltd, the public sector joint venture firm which will begin importing liquefied natural gas from January next year.

With this, 80 per cent of PLL's equity has been tied-up and for the balance 20 per cent, it will float an initial public offering in January 2004, company sources said.

State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd, exploration firm Oil and Natural Gas Corp and gas firm GAIL have 12.5 per cent stake each in PLL, while project consultant Gaz de France has 10 per cent stake.

In all, 160 million shares of face value Rs 10 each would be offered at a premium via the book building route (where investors are asked to fix the share price and highest bidders are allotted shares).

Sources said prospectus for the offer would be floated in December, before which the equity arrangements would be inked.

Meanwhile, a team of senior officials from RasGas is visiting India later this month to renegotiate the price at which it will sell LNG to PLL, sources said adding during the same time Gail, IOC and BPCL will sign the gas offtake agreement with PLL.

"Negotiations so far have indicated that RasGas may agree to sell LNG at a fixed price instead of a $16 to $24 price band linked to crude oil prices. If RasGas sells LNG at price equivalent to 20 dollars a barrel or $2.53 per million BTU (British Thermal Unit), the delivered cost to customers would be 3.9-4.0 dollars per million BTU," they added.