Nambiar clarifies

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, AUG. 24. The K.P.P. Nambiar and Associates has maintained that the Kannur Power Project promoted by it would use only natural gas as the primary fuel, since natural gas would be available from the proposed LNG terminal in Kochi by the time the project starts generating power.

In a rejoinder to the report titled `Move to surrender power from NTPC', published in The Hindu on August 24, the chairman of K.P.P. Nambiar and Associates, Mr. K.P.P. Nambiar, said the project had obtained approval from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) for the use of both natural gas and naphtha as the fuel.

He said the company had already informed the Kerala Government and the KSEB that the project would be using only natural gas as the primary fuel and that it had signed the necessary Memorandum of Understanding with Petronet LNG Ltd, the Bharat Petroleum Company Ltd., and the Gas Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL) for the supply of natural gas from the Kochi terminal by 2005. Due to the delay which had already occurred, the project could be completed only by that time frame even if all the approvals from the State Government were received by June, 2002, he said.

Mr. Nambiar also said that GAIL would be laying the pipeline as a network, enabling both the Kannur Power Project and the Kayamkulam project of the NTPC to simultaneously get the benefit of the natural gas supply.

Referring to the statement in the report that there was objection to the low level of investment the Indian promoters were ready to put into the project, he said the objection of the State Government that ``only 7.8 per cent of the project cost was being brought in'' was based on wrong assumptions on the Central Electricity Authority's (CEA's) clearance letter dated February 16, 2001.

Mr. Nambiar further maintained that the Union Government had now sent a communication to the State Government clarifying that ``the contribution by the promoters to the tune of 11 per cent of the total outlay can be made by both domestic promoter and foreign co-promoter together since the Government of India resolution dated October 11, 1991, does not make any distinction between domestic and foreign co-promoter''.

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