Three years later CGD-III moves forward
Almost three years on and the PNGRB is expected to revive India's third retail gas license round, launched in July 2010.
Working under member infrastructure KK Jha, Board officials are expected to resume the process of opening technical and price bids for the third licensing round at their next meeting in two weeks. "We want to go ahead with the third round like we cleared the second round (on February 11 this year)," confirms a Board source.
Previously the Board considered cancelling the third round because bidders quoted unrealistic targets for network tariffs (weighted 40%), household gas connections (30%), CNG compression charges (10%) and steel pipeline networks (20%). But Board chairman S.
Krishnan, member commercial PK Bishnoi, and member infrastructure Jha appear to think it's better to go ahead with expanding the CGD sector, as they can always impose penalties on companies who fail to meet targets later. The Board has yet to open technical bids for two of the seven cities on offer: Asansol/Durgapur in West Bengal and Ludhiana in Punjab.
"Once the Board decides to go ahead we will open technical bids for Asansol/Durgapur and Ludhiana by end-May," we are told. "After that we will open price bids for all seven cities in June or July.
” The Board received 51 bids for seven areas on February 18, 2011: Asansol-Durgapur received seven bids; in Gujarat Bhavnagar received two bids, Kutch (East) saw eight bids, Kutch (West) got four, and Jamnagar received two; in Punjab, Jalandhar received 12 bids and Ludhiana 16.