Intending to create a national gas grid and increase the availability of natural gas, the union government plans to operationalise a 33,764 Km Natural Gas Pipeline Network across the country.
In March 2021, Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) authorized approximately 33,764 Km Natural Gas Pipeline Network.
Accordingly, 19,998 km of Natural Gas pipeline, including sub-transmission pipeline and tie-in connectivity pipeline, are operational, and 15,369 km are under various construction stages.
The existing and upcoming pipelines will form an essential National Gas Grid in the country!
“However, expansion of pipeline infrastructure is a continuous effort based on gas demand assessment of various regions,” the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said.
The government has taken a series of decisions to promote the use of Natural Gas like City Gas Distribution (CGD) networks, Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) etc.
The development of CGD networks supports the availability and accessibility of natural gas in Piped Natural Gas (PNG) form to households, industrial uses and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for transportation uses.
Also, SATAT was launched on 1 October 2018 to establish an ecosystem for Compressed BioGas (CBG) production from various waste or biomass sources in the country.
SATAT has envisaged developing 5,000 CBG plants with a total CBG production capacity of 15 Million Metric Tonne Per Annum (MMTPA).
Two CBG plants located at Pune and Kolhapur are operational, and their produced CBG is being sold to the Auto sector from September 2019.