India's Gail Targets Over 1mn New Piped Gas Connections

Indian state-owned Gail and its affiliates have set a target to provide 1.14mn piped cooking gas connections in the fiscal year that ends on March 31, 2020, Press Trust of India reported October 2.

Gail and its joint ventures such as the ones that retail compressed natural gas and piped cooking gas in Delhi and Mumbai had achieved just 60% of the target to give 1.12mn connections in the 2018-19 fiscal year, according to company's target document.

In March 2015, the prime minister Narendra Modi had pledged to provide piped natural gas connections to 10mn households in the next four years. India had about 2.6mn households receiving piped gas in 2015. Later, the 10mn target deadline was pushed back by a year to 2020. But even this delayed deadline now looks unrealistic, the news agency reported.

Together with other private city gas distribution firms, piped cooking gas users in India rose from 4.2mn in March 2018 to over 5.2mn a year later. This has risen to 5.4mn as on September 1, according to the oil ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC). Industry officials said the biggest push for piped cooking gas use would come when entities that have been authorised by Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) in two bid rounds in the last one-year start work.

To achieve the target of 10mn piped natural gas users by 2020, a massive 4.5mn connections will have to be made in just one year. But the biggest city gas distribution company, Gail, is only targeting 1.14mn connections in the year to March 31, 2020. This target comprises 0.34mn new connections each in the Delhi national capital region and Mumbai and adjoining towns, and 0.14mn new connections in Pune, a city about 150-km from Mumbai, Press Trust of India said.