Oil regulator to decide CNG winners by month-end

The oil regulator will decide by the end of the month the winners among eight companies including Reliance Industries, Cairn and Indian Oil Corp which had bid for supplying CNG to six towns on offer.

"By the end of this month, we will issue authorization for city gas distribution (CGD)" for the towns that had been put on offer, Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board Chairman L Mansingh said at the NVG 2009 conference here.

Eight companies including Reliance Industries, GAIL, Cairn and Indian Oil Corp had bid for six towns for supplying compressed natural gas (CNG) to automobiles and piped natural gas to households for cooking purpose.

Mansingh refused to name the bidders.

Reliance Gas Company Ltd, a subsidiary of RIL, put in just one bid for the city gas project in Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh while GAIL Gas Ltd, a unit of GAIL, applied for all the other five cities of Kota, Dewas, Meerut, Sonepat and Mathura, industry sources said.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) had called bids for setting up city gas projects for retailing CNG to automobiles and piped natural gas to households in six cities.

The joint venture of Indian Oil Corp and Adani Energy bid for Kota, Dewas, Meerut and Sonepat, while Cairn in a joint venture with Bharat Petroleum put in bids for Kota and Sonepat. GAIL Gas was the sole bidder for Mathura.

Bhagyanagar Gas Ltd was the only other bidder for Kakinada while in Dewas Gujarat State Petroleum Corp was in contention with IOC-Adani and GAIL Gas.

Kota had IOC-Adani, GAIL Gas and Cairn-BPCL in direct competition.
 
In Meerut, IOC-Adani and GAIL Gas faced competition from Indraprastha Gas Ltd, the sole supplier of CNG at the national capital. IGL was also a bidder for Sonepat where IOC-Adani, GAIL Gas, Cairn-BPCL and DCM Infrastructure were the other bidders.