The Government will give city gas projects selling CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households top-most priority for receipt of domestically produced gas.
At present, urea manufacturing fertiliser plants have the first right over domestically produced gas, followed by liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plants and power stations. City gas distribution (CGD) projects are ranked fourth currently.
This priority listing is now being changed to give top priority to CGD firms like Indraprastha Gas Ltd (IGL), which sells CNG to automobiles and piped gas to households in the national capital, official sources said.
CGD firms like IGL currently get 8.32 million standard cubic meters per day of gas out of the total domestic supplies of about 77 mmscmd.
As city gas projects get rolled out in newer cities, the requirement of the sector will grow and so the Government is now giving it top priority.
Sources said compressed natural gas (CNG) and piped natural gas (PNG) are clean fuels and will help replace subsidised diesel in automobiles and LPG in households, respectively.
New policy
According to the new allocation policy being finalised, additional requirement for CGD will be first met by imposing proportionate cuts in the domestic gas currently being supplied to sectors other than priority sectors as decided by the Oil Ministry.
Plants providing inputs to stretegic sectors of atomic energy and space research will get second priority, followed by plants that can extract higher fractions from natural gas. Gas-based urea plants will rank fourth in the priority list and power stations fifth.
Since domestic gas production is now stagnant, it is being proposed to freeze the allocation to all sectors expect CND and LPG sector, at the supply levels of 2013-14.
In 2013-14, fertiliser plants received 29.79 mmscmd of gas. Power plants got 25.59 mmscmd, while LPG extraction plants received 1.83 mmscmd. Petrochemical plants received 3.32 mmscmd, while refineries got 1.89 mmscmd and steel plants 1.32 mmscmd.
Sources said incremental production from NELP blocks like KG-D6 and Gujarat State Petroleum Corp’s (GSPC) Deendayal gas will be allocated as per the decision taken at the meeting of an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on August 23, 2013.
The EGoM had decided that incremental gas would go to power plants.
Since the BJP government has wound up the EGoM on gas pricing and allocation, the new priority list is being vetted by a Committee of Secretaries (CoS) and a final order is likely to be issued shortly, the sources added.