ONGC to use Bangladesh waterways to transport instruments in Tripura

Agartala, Sep 7 (UNI) Oil Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) is planning to use the waterways of Bangladesh for transporting the machines and building materials for 740MW power project in Palatana of south Tripura.

Addressing mediapersons here today, Director, ONGC(Onshore) A K Hazarika said power generation in the project would not come up before 2012 as only two companies--Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (BHEL) and Aelstrom Ltd-- had bid for the project but they declined to commission it within 36 months.

"We had planned earlier to generate power from Palatana by 2010 but the situation has changed now and the full-fledged operation of the project is expected to start in 2014-15," Mr Hazarika said.

Elaborating the status of the project, he said despite global tender, only two companies had bid for Palatana project with certain conditions.

"In fact, transportation of machines from Karimganj of South Asom to Tripura had now become a major hurdles because the loading capacity of National Highway-44 is less than 250 MT but our machines are too heavy for the road capacity," he underlined.

Mr Hazarika, however, stated that ONGC had been trying to use the water routes of Bangladesh as an alternative to place the machines in Palatana but still it was in infant stage.

According to him, the success rate of ONGC exploration in Tripura is higher than global standard, as it is 1:2 in Tripura while 1:3 in other parts of the world, which encouraged the oil giant to carry out more explorations in the state.

Immense reserve of natural gas is present in non-associate form in Tripura with high methane content of upto 97 per cent, he stated adding that based on the exploration work so far, ONGC had estimated the total gas reserves in the state was 400 BCM as prognosticated Reserves and a half of it had so far been utilised.

Currently, ONGC is extracting three million cubic metre gases from 124 wells in Tripura and drilling is on at 64 new places in the state to fulfill the requirements of the Palatana project in which ONGC has nearly 70 per cent stake.

UNI