‘Gas supplies drying up,keep power plans at bay’

In a May 11 note to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA),the power ministry said as per the information provided by the petroleum ministry,gas production is likely to dip by 15.03 mmscmd in 2012-13 and by ab additional 3.42 mmscmd in 2013-14 as against the availability of 42.67 mmscmd gas in 2011-12.

It said that the oil ministry has not given any projection on the availability of the feedstock fuel for 2014-15 and 2015-16. “It is evident from the above that no additional domestic gas is likely to be available till 2015-16,” the power ministry said and asked the electricity generating firms not to plan projects based on domestic gas till that period.

The Association of Power Producers,the umbrella body of the country’s top power producers has represented to petroleum minister Jaipal Reddy on May 11 that the biggest challenge before the producers is to secure adequate and appropriately priced fuel to keep their production costs within control.

Soaring gas prices because of the rupee’s depreciation (as gas is priced in dollars) and depleting output of the fuel from Reliance Industries’ (RIL) KG-D6 basin may lead to utilities operating at only 30 per cent of their Plant Load Factor by 2015,which would be eventually rendered inoperable.

RIL has told the oil ministry that gas production from the fields have dropped to about 32.66 mmscmd in the week ended May 6 from 33.89 mmscmd in April.

During the year 2011-12 power utilities reported a generation loss of the order of 9 Billion Units (BU) and 11 BUs due to shortage of coal and gas respectively. A total of ten gas based power stations have and aggregate installed capacity of 17,742.85 MW.