There is news for cheer on the gas front. LNG pipelines for transferring gas from the Ennore Port near Chennai metro to Tiruvallur-Bengaluru-Puducherry-Nagapattinam-Madurai-Tuticorin are expected to be completed in early 2022. S S Sawant, Executive Director, Southern Region Pipelines, IndianOil, said that work on this 1244 km long pipeline has been proceeding apace. He expressed hope for completing the work before the end of the financial year.
NATURAL GAS IS an elegant and economical source as a fuel and feedstock for fertilizers and a variety of petrochemical products. Piped gas for use as a domestic fuel has been safe, elegant and economical. The facility is already available for quite some time in other metros and large towns like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad…
Consumers will have the benefit of using this on tap and getting much cheaper than the price at which LPG is presently supplied through the heavy gas cylinders.
INVESTMENT of Rs 12000 crore…
In 2019 IndianOil constructed a port terminal with sophisticated facilities to import and store natural gas at a cost of around Rs 5500 crore. The giant corporation will be spending another around Rs 6000 crore on laying these pipelines. In quick time it laid pipelines to the Manali industrial belt nearby. Chennai Petroleum Corporation, Madras Fertilizers, Tamil Nadu Petroproducts and Manali Petrochemicals have been the immediate beneficiaries. Without waiting for the construction of the pipeline, the alert Saint Gobain Glass India invested on facilities to transfer gas by special road tankers for its large production of flat glass. I remember Managing Director Saint Gobain Group in India, B Santhanam pointing as early as 2009 to the huge economy and elegance of shifting to natural gas as fuel.
To speed up construction of the pipeline, IndianOil divided the work into seven sections. Most of the pipelines run through Tamil Nadu; the Manali-Bengaluru pipeline goes through stretches in Andhra Pradesh (around 113 km) and Karnataka (around 215 km).
Contracts to distribute gas for domestic, automobile and other users for Chennai, Chengalpettu and Kancheepuram districts have been given. A couple of months ago Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin inaugurated 25 CNG stations and 1 city gate station of Torrent Gas. Such distribution points receive gas through caskets transferred by road from the Ennore LNG terminal.
Once the pipeline work is completed there will be prospects for constructing spur lines to meet demand from cities and towns en-route. For instance, the Manali-Bengaluru line can meet demand from the large industrial complexes at Sriperumbudur and Hosur.
IE has been pressing the case for the south getting a fair share of natural gas right from the late 1990s when the HBJ pipeline was laid to transfer gas from the Bombay High to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, UP, Haryana and Delhi. The construction of gas terminals at Vizhinjam in Kerala and Ennore in Tamil Nadu has made it possible to reach CNG to Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
The construction of the Ramanathapuram-Tuticorin pipeline a few months ago has enabled the transfer of gas from ONGC gas fields to the SPIC fertilizer plant at Thoothukudi. One may recall that SPIC was set up as the largest urea plant with capacity of 1600 TPD based on naphtha. It flourished for a couple of decades but turned sick when naphtha prices shot up. There are thus bright prospects for SPIC turning around after a lapse of nearly three decades.
Ensure piped gas to homes in a year
Southern state governments, more importantly, entrepreneurs of this region have been content to invest in traditional industries. There has been the focus on auto and auto components, engineering and IT apart from cement, sugar, leather and textiles. Share of Tamil Nadu in chemicals and petrochemicals has been a poor 6 per cent of all India consumption. The state should help complete the gas and product pipelines being laid by IndianOil and GAIL in quick time and open up investments on a much larger scale in this sunrise sector, with huge potential for investment and jobs. The state government should also help laying spurlines to take gas to the numerous towns and villages. The administration should help reach the gas to domestic consumers by facilitating the laying of the pipelines along highways and streets with quick clearances. There is hope for the domestic consumer of Tamil Nadu getting gas on tap soon.
