Torrent to start Chennai domestic gas supply
After years of setbacks, Torrent Gas is poised to begin supplying piped gas to homes and factories in Chennai.
"We have begun accepting household registrations to supply piped gas," confirms a company source. About 1500 apartments in Metrozone, an upmarket residential complex close to Anna Nagar, will be the first to get gas-on-tap in Chennai by the end of this month (April) or next month (May).
These apartments are in 19 residential tower blocks, which will be served by a single Distributed Control System (DCS) to supply gas. Without a gas pipeline, cylinder stacks (cascades) filled with CNG will be brought to the DCS; the gas will transit through a pressure reduction system and then through pipelines to the apartments.
But this is a temporary arrangement. Torrent is laying a 35-km steel pipeline from its City Gate Station (CGS) at Vallur in north Chennai to Metrozone through the Ambattur industrial cluster.
"This pipeline will be ready by September (2023)," we are told, "and will supply piped gas to small and medium factories in Ambattur." Torrent will source its gas from IndianOil's 5m t/y Ennore LNG terminal and awaits the completion of an R-LNG evacuation pipeline to Tuticorin through Vallur.
For now, R-LNG from Ennore is piped to Vallur. After the Vallur to Metrozone pipeline is laid, Torrent plans to provide piped gas connections to approximately 40,000 households in and around Chennai in 2023-24.
Vallur is Torrent's first CGS for Chennai and used to supply CNG to 60 'daughter' booster stations in the metropolis, selling 80,000 cm/d of gas to vehicles. "These 'daughter' booster stations are now getting connected by pipeline to the 'mother' CNG station at Vallur," confirms Torrent.
By last month (March), Torrent had laid nearly 70-km of steel pipeline in Chennai and Thiruvallur and plans to eventually sell piped gas to apartment blocks, factories and commercial units in Manali, Mhadavaram and other areas of Chennai. Torrent won the Chennai and Tiruvallur licence on February 17 (2020) after a long Supreme Court battle against Adani Gas which also bid for the two areas in CGD-IX.
In its minimum work programme, Torrent commits to laying 6666-inch km of pipeline, connecting 3.3m homes and setting up 222 CNG stations over eight years.