Union Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia asked AK Antony, Chairman of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on ‘Gas Pricing and Commercial Utilisation of Gas’ to convene a meeting of the panel to restore natural gas supply to power plants.
Scindia has called for the meeting as around 13 power plants with an aggregate electricity generation capacity of 5,200 megawatt are closed because of lack of gas from KG-D6.
These power plants stopped receiving natural gas following the decline in the output at Reliance Industries’ (RIL) KG-D6 gas field to an all-time low.
Gas output at the field declined to 16.46 million standard cubic meter per day, which not even sufficient to meet requirement of urea-manufacturing fertiliser plants and LPG plants. Thus, power plants, which are placed third on the supply priority list, are left with no gas.
Since March 2013, RIL completely stopped supplying fuel to power plants, which were getting a little less than 1 mmscmd of gas in February.
Supply cuts will be imposed on sectors listed at the bottom of the priority list first, and moving upwards with further drop in supplies.
According to some reports, the union power ministry wants the current output at KG-D6 basin to be distributed on pro-rata basis among fertiliser and power plants.
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