Cairn pipeline file back with Deora
Cairn India is no closer to getting cost recovery for its $800m proposed 591-km pipeline to evacuate Mangala crude than it was last April when the proposal was first made.
On February 22, the powerful Empowered Committee of Secretaries approved Cairn’s cost recovery proposal but the file is now back on Deora’s desk. Usually, ministers endorse ECS recommendations but Deora, it seems, is making a habit of overturning them with startling regularity.
Last year he overturned an ECS recommendation to allow BP first right of refusal to farm-in to ONGC deepwater block GK-DWN-1. Despite uncertainty over Deora’s next move, Cairn is going ahead with plans for first Mangala production in 2009 and on February 21 announced that Larsen & Toubro had won the EPC contract to lay a 24-inch diameter pipeline to move 150,000b/d to Salaya port in Gujarat.
“Cairn is just getting on with the project and will deal with the issue when it comes up again,â€we hear.