Indian Oil Corporation is confident of meeting the Tamil Nadu government’s guidelines on pipeline alignment to be able to complete on schedule the ₹5,150-crore LNG import terminal planned to the north of Chennai.
Indian Oil will float the joint venture for the project within one month and will complete the project by 2017, according to B Ashok, Chairman, IOC. The joint venture will finalise the formality of land acquisition for the project coming up within the Kamarajar Port at Ennore and start work.
With IOC positioned as the lowest bidder for the ₹2,800-crore LNG pipeline project that will link the five-million-tonne a year import terminal with the industrial and residential centres that will use the fuel, he was confident that the company can meet the guidelines laid down by the State government.
In 2013, following stiff opposition from farmers to a GAIL pipeline being laid through farm lands, the Tamil Nadu government came out with stringent guidelines which prevented oil companies from laying pipelines across agricultural lands and directed them to align pipelines along the highways.
This resulted in work on the Kochi-Bengaluru LNG pipeline project by GAIL being stalled as work on a 300-km stretch traversing the western districts of Tamil Nadu was stopped. The issue is now in the Supreme Court.
In an informal interaction with media persons Ashok, who was in Chennai to participate at an alumni meet of the College of Engineering, Guindy, the pipeline alignment issue will not be a factor in IOC’s project which is in the initial stage. The LNG pipeline to be laid by IOC will mostly follow an existing pipeline route for liquid petroleum products. “So a large part of the gas pipeline will be along the existing right-of-way” for IOC and for the rest it will work within state government guidelines, the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation, a state-run enterprise, is a partner in the project, he said.
The Ennore LNG import terminal is the first such infrastructure on the east coast and will hugely benefit the economy of the state. LNG, a relatively cheap and clean fuel as compared with liquid fuel, will be available for industry and household fuel through city gas distribution systems, he said.
IOC has captive LNG resources overseas that account for at least two million tonnes, nearly half of the initial capacity of five million tonnes. This includes the 2 million tonnes from projects in Canada and Cameroon where IOC has a stake, Ashok said.