India’s dream of providing clean gas-based power stations is turning sour. Three gas-based power plants, including Pragati, Bawana and Rithala in the NCR region, with a combined capacity of over 1,730 MW, have literally “run out of gas”.
With ministry of petroleum and natural gas sources confirming that India’s gas output is expected to fall by 35 per cent in this fiscal year and another 12 per cent between 2013-14, the situation is expected to become alarming this summer.
Already, both minister of petroleum and natural gas Jaipal Reddy and the Association of Power Producers, led by its director-general Ashok Khurana, have asked the government to stop supply of gas to non-core sectors and to focus supply only in power and fertiliser.
The story is being repeated across the country. GVK’s two gas-based power plants in Andhra Pradesh have reached “critical” levels due to shortage of gas. The GVK plants, Gautami and Jengurupadu, are running at around 50 per cent of plant load factor and any further dip may force the company to shut them down.
Both these projects were to have undertaken major expansion which has been put on hold. Another claque of projects with a generation capacity of 4,000 MW which were to have commenced power generation March-end are also on hold because of a shortage of gas.
The Delhi government is having second thoughts about shutting down the Rajghat coal-based power station. Coal-based power plants are polluting as compared to gas-based power plants, which have no particulate emissions and lower levels of nitrogen oxide.
Sunita Narain, director of Centre for Science and Environment which closely monitors pollution, quotes from the CAG report which has questioned how Reliance Industries was allowed to be given the entire eastern offshore KG-D6 block, allegedly in contravention of the production sharing contract.
“The question to be asked is how can we go by the claims of Reliance Industries when they say they have no gas. After all, their partner, oil major BP, which has picked up a 30 per cent stake for $7.2 billion, would not have invested so much money if these were dud fields.”
A senior bureaucrat in the ministry of petroleum has rued how the government has lost out to major gas deals in Turkmenistan and Burma to China. “Even a traditionally India-friendly country with gas reserves like Qatar is moving closer to China,” he said.
He added, “Importing more gas means the cost of power generation will double and this is a minefield which no government wants to touch.”