RIL plans city gas projects in Maharashtra, AP

Mumbai, Apr 25: Reliance Industries will invest over Rs 5,000 crore for setting up city gas distribution (CGD) projects in eight cities in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh for supply of natural gas to households, industries and automobiles.

Reliance wants to set up CGD networks in Vishakhapatnam, Kakinada, Vijayawada, Nalgonda and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh and Solapur, Pune and Thane in Maharashtra to supply natural gas through pipes to households for use as cooking fuel, the company said in its proposal submitted to the Petroleum Ministry recently.

It also plans to supply gas, sourced from its gigantic field in Bay of Bengal, to commercial consumers likes hotels, restaurants and hospitals and industries and automobiles (in the form of CNG).

The company said, Dhirubhai-1 and Dhirubhai-3 discoveries in KG-DWN-98/3 (or KG-D6) block off the Andhra coast would produce 40 milion standard cubic meters per day (MMSCMD) from mid-2008 and CGD projects, once allocated to Reliance, would begin rolling out from 2008-09 fiscal end.

It has received approval for the East-West pipeline, Kakinada-Hyderabad-Uran-Ahmedabad pipeline, to transport the KG-D6 gas.

With RIL planning to supply a total of 8 MMSCMD gas per day, each cities share would be - Vishakhapatnam (1 MMSCMD), Kakinada (0.4 MMSCMD), Vijayawada (0.8 MMSCMD), Nalgonda (0.3 MMSCMD), Hyderabad (1.2 MMSCMD), Solapur (0.4 MMSCMD), Pune (1 MMSCMD) and Thane (3 MMSCMD), as per the proposal.

UNI