Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Endless wait for Reliance gas

HYDERABAD: There seems to be no end to the wait by the State government for gas from Reliance. The gas from the onshore facilities of the Krishna-Godavari Basin belonging to the Reliance Industries Ltd. continues to be elusive like a mirage.

Officials of the APTransco who kept high hopes on the deadlines set by the RIL to make its gas available to the State, are now crestfallen.

All their plans of activating four newly completed gas-based power stations which were kept idle for want of gas, have gone haywire.

Now, the Transco has been forced to opt for naphtha, operate four existing power stations to spare the gas allotted to them for an equal number of newly-completed projects.

If Reliance gas is available to the completed project which has a combined capacity of 1,499 MW, the State would have been surplus in power.

Till date, there has been no communication from the government about the arrival timing of this gas. Going by the feedback from RIL, the government last year announced it would get the Reliance gas by June 2008, but this deadline was postponed later to December and now to April 2009. Sources said the Union Petroleum & Natural Gas Ministry dropped broad hints to Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy in New Delhi on Wednesday that Reliance might not be able to fulfil even the latest deadline.

The State’s total requirement by 2020 for power projects, industries and other purposes has been projected at 40 mmscmd(million metric standard cubic msetres per day).

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