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At Dabhol Plant, The Wait is Still on for Gas From ONGC

  • The once infamous Dabhol power plant, now rechristened Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd (RGPPL), is faced with a huge short supply of raw material.According to a well-placed source, the government had allocated 7.6 mmscmd (million metric standard cubic metres per day) of gas from KG basin and 0.9 mmscmd of gas from ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for the plant. “But while KG basin’s supply has receded, supply from ONGC is still not there.”The plant is currently getting only 5.5 mmscmd of gas from KG basin, the source said.On the other hand, technical issues between the supplier ONGC and transporter GAIL have held up supply of the promised 0.9 mmscmd.

  • This has resulted in a production loss of around 200 mw per day and forcing the plant to run a capacity of only 1,200 megawatt (mw) out of the total 1,967 mw available.The government had allocated the ONGC gas on September 21 and the supply was to begin immediately.However, according to the source, the supply is yet to commence as ONGC’s gas is at a low pressure and cannot be fed directly into GAIL’s high-pressure pipeline to the plant.

  • “While GAIL claims that it is still working on the problem, the only foreseeable solution is for a third party which is ready to swap a high pressure gas with a low pressure gas,” the source said.Such an arrangement would require a customer of GAIL which buys both low pressure and high pressure gas and which is willing to swap the ONGC gas with a similar volume from GAIL.Understandably, it has not been possible to find such a customer yet. GAIL officials could not be reached for comment. Ratnagiri Gas, now equally held by NTPC and GAIL, was a special purpose vehicle floated by the government in July 2005 to revive the erstwhile Dabhol Power Company, which was shut for almost five years after its completion in the late 90s. The power produced by the plant is supplied directly to the state grid, which is seeing a shortfall of 2,000 mw a day for lack of adequate coal and gas to fire the power plants in the state.

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