Kolkata to get piped natural gas in 3 years

In the next three years, the Kolkata metropolis is set to join the select league of cities where cooking gas is supplied to the households via pipeline thereby exterminating the need for gas cylinders to be sent to individual households.

Under an ambitious project by the Union petroleum ministry, pipelines carrying cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) will be sent to the households directly.

The gas for the project in Kolkata will be sourced from Haldia-Jagadishpur gas pipleline which is now getting expanded across 2,539-km to be rechristened as the Phulpur-Haldia-Ranchi-Dhamra pipeline by 2019. The pipeline will address to the needs of the eastern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha. 

The Union government is bearing 40 per cent of the estimated Rs 12,000 crore to be spent for executing the eastern gas pipeline project while GAIL will invest around  Rs 7,200.

“We are in talks with the state (West Bengal) government to execute the project and in process of identifying the areas where this can be rolled out”, Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan said here.

However, the piped natural gas (PNG) project will be limited to the prime locations in the metropolis initially.

Although Pradhan is confident of executing the project in a 2-year timeframe, another year has been kept as a buffer to obtain the necessary right of way for the PNG implementation.

Currently, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Indore, Kanpur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Surat have PNG projects although these are not widespread.

The centre has targeted to provide around 28,00,000 LPG cylinders to the poor in the state under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) scheme which targets to provide five crore LPG connections to the poor households in the country with a support of Rs.1,600 per connection in the next three years.

Pradhan said out of 2.15 crore households in the state, only 1.10 crore homes have an LPG connection.

The petroleum ministry is also investing Rs. 190 crore to augment the bottling plant capacity in Hindustan Petroleum’s Panagarh bottling plant which will increase the production of LPG cylinders drastically.

“This will become India’s largest bottling plant. Investments in excess of Rs. 6000 crore has been planned to increase capacity and distribution of gas in West Bengal”, he said.

Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Babul Supriyo said the centre is also considering mining of natural gas in the Andal airport area. He however, did not divulge any further details on the same.

India to start LPG export to Bangladesh

The union petroleum ministry is in talks with the Bangladeshi government to start exporting LPG to the country.

Pradhan said he had a “very fruitful discussion” with Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during his recent visit.

“The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has started the process for a pipeline from Contai in West Bengal via Haldia to Duttapulia (Nadia district) on the India-Bangladesh border for supplying oil and natural gas," Pradhan said adding that the same pipeline can be routed to Siliguri in West Bengal to cater to the needs of the northern part of West Bengal.

The centre is also planning to propose setting up of LNG terminal in Bangladesh.

India is currently exporting diesel to its eastern neighbour.

The minister said his government is also ramping up India’s natural gas capability by booking substantial amount of imports from USA, Australia, Mozambique and Qatar while discussions for gas procurement is on with Iran.

“Around 30 million tonne (mt) of gas capacity is being built in the eastern and western coasts which will take up our capacity to over 50 mt”, Pradhan added.