PM to launch City Gas Projects

November 22, 2018 Hot from the Oven Valli Sarvani No comments

In order to shift the country towards an environment friendlier gas, Indian government is mulling to launch gas projects.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to lay the foundation stone in New Delhi today for City Gas Distribution (CGD) projects.

The Petroleum Ministry states that projects will be held in 19 states and 7 Union Territories to cover 65 Geographical Areas (GA) which means providing gas to nearly half of the country’s population.

The ninth CGD bidding round held recently would cover 129 districts. The PM will also launch the tenth CGD bidding round in 50 areas. With this, the gas projects would spread to more than 124 districts in 14 states.

The CGD projects are aimed to improve the availability of clean cooking fuel or Piped Natural Gas (PNG). It will also improve the transportation fuel Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for consumers.

Government says that CNG is 60 percent cheaper than fuel and PNG is 40 percent cheaper than the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) used for cooking.

So far, 46.5 lakh households and 32 lakh CNG vehicles have been covered under the project in 96 cities.

The ninth CGD bidding round had been launched by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) in April for 86 geographical areas.

Out of them, the projects would be developed by the government authorized bidders in 84 areas.

They will cover 174 districts in 22 states and Union Territories.

The government aimed to provide approximately 2 crore domestic PNG connections and install 4,600 CNG stations in the coming eight years. However, this is mainly based on the commitment of the entities that participated in the bidding round.

If the aim is successfully fulfilled, almost half of the country’s population would be covered in more than 35 percent of the country’s area.

The e-bidding process was initiated on November 8. Bids can be submitted by February 5, 2019 while a pre-bid conference is planned on December 6.

Image credit: Howdy, Modi! image by The White House (Public Domain Mark 1.0)