GAIL India, the country’s largest pipeline operator, said it has placed an order worth Rs 1,100 cr to buy pipeline required to connect the North Eastern states to the ambitious Jagadishpur— Haldia—Bokaro-Dhamra project.
The Jagadishpur—Haldia—Bokaro-Dhamra project runs through three states — Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, and is meant to connect these eastern states to the national gas grid.
GAIL said 92% of the work on phase-1 of the Jagadishpur—Haldia—Bokaro-Dhamra project is complete and the rest is expected to be completed within next two months.
As a result, supply of domestic piped gas has started at Varanasi, Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack. “Given the steady progress achieved so far, the city gas projects could soon be rolled—out at Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Kolkata,” the company said.
Once that is complete, work on the spurline will start from December 2018.
It will be 616 km long and is part of a 729 km feeder line linking North East India with the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga pipeline network.
The order, said the company, marks the completion of mainline ordering for the entire 729 km section.
The ‘Indradhanush’ gas grid network, being developed by GAIL along with JV partners lOCL, OIL, NRL and ONGC, is supposed to provide uninterrupted supply of natural gas across all the North Eastern States, while the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga project endeavours to connect East and North East States of India with the existing gas pipeline grid for household, transport, industrial and commercial uses.
Chairman B C Tripathi said his company is oncurrently executing over 5,500 kms of gas transmission network at an estimated outlay of Rs 25,000 cr. “GAIL is committed to complete the pipeline within scheduled time and cost.”
He also said that work on pipelines in Kerala and Karnataka have been fast tracked for completion by the end of current fiscal year, and that more than 85% physical progress has been achieved under the Kochi to Mangalore pipeline project.