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ONGC and Oil India to enter city gas business
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merisarkar news service
New Delhi, November 29, 2010
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ONGC to enter into City Gas Biz
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India's leading Oil and Gas explorer and Refiner Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India (OIL) have joined hands separately with Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for a foray into city gas distribution (CGD).
Though ONGC and OIL are major producers of natural gas, they currently have no presence in its retailing and marketing, a field dominated by GAIL and its joint ventures
ONGC owns and operates 22,000 km of pipelines in India, including nearly 4,500 kilometres under the sea. It has tied up with BPCL and OIL.
"This is a sector that has tremendous growth potential. Since it is a retail business, we have tied up with BPCL and have identified certain cities for bidding," DK Sarraf, Director (finance), ONGC told a leading business publication in New Delhi.
TK Ananth Kumar, director (finance) OIL, said the company had formed two consortiums, one with IOC and the second with ONGC and BPCL. "We are looking to bid for some cities," he said. IOC, BPCL and Hindustan Petroleum, the three state-owned oil marketing companies had earlier formed a consortium with Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation to bid for trunk gas pipelines.
Recently, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) invited bids for installing and running a CGD network in Asansol-Durgapur (in West Bengal), Bhavnagar, Gandhidham-Anjar, Bhuj-Mundra and Jamnagar (all in Gujarat), Ludhiana and Jalandhar (in Punjab) and Panipat (in Haryana). The bids will close on December 3. Setting up a full-fledged CGD network with CNG stations and a pipeline for industrial and domestic consumers usually costs Rs 1,000-1,500 crore. The Board plans to take a CGD network to 200 cities by 2015.
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