Dikshit visits Bawana power plant

The plant, which is considered as one of the major gas based power plant in the country, has been facing severe shortage of fuel for last eight months which is also resulting in its periodic shut down.

Officials said Dikshit visited the plant to personally assess the situation arising out of RIL not supplying gas to the plant as per allocation made to it by an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on gas allocation headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in February.

The first module of plant, which has capacity to produce at least 750 MW of power, was made ready in April last year but it could start producing only 200 to 250 MW of power from November last year after Oil Ministry allocated 1.564 mmscmd (million metric standard cubic metres per day) gas to plant from ONGC.

However, irregular supply of gas has been forcing periodic shut down of the plant.

After failing to get gas for the plant from RIL as per an earlier understanding, the Delhi government in February had sought intervention Mukherjee so that the plant could at least generate 750 MW of power so as to bridge the gap between demand and supply in summer months.

The EGoM in its meeting on February 24, heeding to the Delhi government's request, had allocated 0.836 mmscmd to the plant from RIL's Andhra offshore KG-D6 fields but the company has expressed inability to supply the fuel due to drop in gas production.

Officials said Dikshit asked Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) to complete work on module-two of the plant by end of 2012 to take the production capacity to 1,500 MW. The work on module two, which was scheduled for completion in March this year, has slowed down following lack of gas supply to module one. MORE