Gujarat Gas and Adani protest PNGRB milestones
Gujarat Gas and Adani Gas are on a collision course with the Petroleum & Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) over their yearly targets for household piped gas connections.
PETROWATCH learns Adani has refused to accept the Board's authorisation of its Ahmedabad CGD network as it came with the condition that Adani must connect 150,000 households to its gas grid every year. This far exceeds Adani's own plans to connect only 32,000 households every year till 2017.
“Last month we wrote back to the Board asking it to scale down the targets,” Adani tells us. “We hope the Board will listen.
" Adani says many areas of Ahmedabad have started receiving gas already, making it difficult to achieve rapid growth. “If the yearly growth rate of households and the car population in a city like Ahmedabad is 10% and the Board wants a growth rate of 25% then it is not possible to achieve,” says Adani.
Adani supplies 463,000 cm/d of piped gas to factories, businesses and households in Ahmedabad. Of this, 82,000 cm/d goes to 181,893 households.
Gujarat Gas is facing a similar problem in Surat, Bharuch and Ankleshwar where it received Board authorisation and three-year marketing exclusivity on November 8, 2012. The PNGRB wants Gujarat Gas to add a whopping 85,000 household connections every year.
Gujarat Gas is already selling 384,000 cm/d to 320,000 households. In a good year like 2012, the company could add only 34,600 households to its gas grid.
“Adding 85,000 connections a year is not possible,” says Gujarat Gas. “That means connecting 233 households every day.
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