Bids Invited for RIL's CBM Pipeline

India’s downstream oil regulator Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has invited bids for laying a 300km gas pipeline connecting the site of RIL’s CBM production in Shahdol in MP to Phulpur in UP, Business Standard has reported.

Earlier this year, Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Ltd had approached the Board with an Expression of Interest (EoI) to lay down the pipeline.

Bid documents will be on sale from November 22 and will be on till March 14, 2013. Last date for submission of bid is March 21, 2013, said a Board official.

According to the EoI submitted by RGTIL to PNGRB in June this year, it has identified 73 potential consumers along the Shahdol-Phulpu route. These include the likes of JSW Ispat Steel, Indiabulls Power, Essar Oil, Nirma, Tata Chemicals, NTPC and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertiliser. Interestingly, price of coal bed methane or CBM gas for both RIL and Essar Oil has not been approved for the last several months. The issue of price has been referred to C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.

“In the light of the planned CBM gas production from the second half of 2014, expeditious execution is needed for this pipeline,” RGTIL had said in the EoI. RGTIL operates a 1,400-km gas pipeline network in the country.