CHENNAI: Vehicle owners in Chennai will have compressed natural gas, called CNG, as an alternative for fuel in the next two to three years.
A city gas distribution project will be set up in the coming years that will pave the way for the greener alternative to be available for vehicles.
Disclosing this, R Tiwari, General Manager of GAIL (India) Limited, said CNG would help save fuel by 50 to 60 per cent. Besides, it would also have economic and environmental viability.
Once the 1,270-km Kakinada-Chennai and Chennai-Thoothukudi pipelines are completed, more than 20 mmscmd (million metric standard cubic metres a day) gas will be produced for the state’s consumption, he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on Energy Self Sufficiency, organised by FICCI.
More than 70 per cent of the gas will be routed for power and fertiliser sectors.
CGD to reduce dependence on petrol
CHENNAI: Chennai would be on the compressed natural gas (CNG) map after the City Gas Distribution (CDG) project is implemented.
The CDG would reduce the nation’s dependence on petrol by 31 per cent and help save $87 billion of foreign exchange flowing outside the country through oil imports, according to a top official of Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL).
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a conference on Energy Self Sufficiency - The Future, organised by FICCI here on Friday, R Tiwari, general manager of GAIL (India) said more than 230 cities, including Chennai, have been identified by his firm for the project.
For the first phase, the project would be taken up in 17 cities through a GAIL subsidiary, with authorisation from Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB).
The subsidiary would directly interact with PNGRB on authorisation and execution of CGD projects across India.
The CGD network would create CNG corridors for distributing and marketing of CNG as fuel for vehicles (inter city as well as intra city), piped natural gas for domestic/ commercial/ industrial purposes and auto LPG as fuel for transport vehicles.
Gas resources in India are not evenly distributed due to lack of infrastructure and proximity of sources to nearby markets. CDG would help bridge that gap.
Tiwari said that GAIL was spearheading a new era of green fuel industrialisation by creating quadrilateral green energy corridors with interconnections to all supply sources, including the LNG re-gassification facilities in the country.
He said that government was encouraging public sector units to aggressively pursue equity oil and gas opportunities overseas.
His statement comes in the wake of India suffering a blow when China got away with the Myanmar deal, which India was eying. Currently, India is planning to import gas from Turkmenistan through transnational pipelines.
EB’s transmission loss
Earlier, Tamil Nadu Electricity Board chairman and managing director C P Singh said more than Rs 4,000 crore was needed to improve the equipment in substations to cut down transmission and distribution loss.
“A study was conducted by 130 engineers split in 12 groups across the State to look into the equipment in substations and how they can be improved. It was found out that Rs 4,000 crore worth improvement works need to be done and we are expecting Central aid in this regard,” he said.
“After this is done, the transmission and distribution loss would go down from 19 to below 15 per cent,” he said.
Fast breeder reactors
Dr Chellapandi, director, Nuclear Safety Engineering Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam said the current capacity of 45,060 MW power would be enhanced to 64,000 MW by 2030.
Beyond 2030 mainly Fast Breed Reactor with metallic fuel would contribute to one-fourth of the total energy in the country.
France consul general Pierre Fournier and US consul general Andrew T Simkin also spoke on the occasion.