Union Petroleum Ministry decided to allocate the scarce natural gas produced from the Reliance Industries’ KG-D6 field on a rotation basis to power plants.
According to this plan, power plants would get fuel supplies needed for operating the unit at optimal capacity for one month turn-by-turn.
The acute shortage in availability of domestic gas for the power sector has lead to many of power plants operating at much less than the minimum required PLF.
The move is aimed at ensuring that the scarce fuel is made available to all power plants. It is expected that the new scheme would improve the plant-load factor (or operating rate) as well as efficiency of one of the units instead of all the units functioning inefficiently and being compelled to shut down owing to the drastic reduction in gas supply.
Gas production from KG-D6 block has dropped to 25.35 million standard cubic meter a day this month, from over 63 mmscmd peak output achieved in August 2010. This has led to pro-rata cuts in supplies to power plants, forcing some units to work at sub-optimal levels.
Media reports suggest that the scheme may be applied in the beginning to six private power plants in Andhra Pradesh and the ministry has sought industry comments on the planned arrangement.
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