Gassed for life
Union minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Satish Sharma and the chief ministers of the southern states met in Bangalore on March 26 to establish a natural gas network for these states. Put together, the states are expected to have an aggregate demand of 40 million cubic metres (cum) per day by the end of the century.
This is despite serious misgivings about the availability and transportation of gas from the Oman pipeline. The $7 billion Oman petroleum pipeline project, scheduled for completion in 1998, is supposed to supplement the limited gas reserves available in south India. It will transport 56.6 million cum of gas per day to the west coast of India, through a pipeline laid at a depth of 3,000 meters.
The ministry has admitted that there will be no surplus left to be diverted to the southern grid from the gas available from offshore Bombay fields. Sharma concedes, "We have had a bitter experience of the mismatch in the Hazira-Bijapur-Jagdishpur pipeline, where the users were not in place although the gas was already flowing. This should be avoided in the case of the gas from Oman." The ministry is, meanwhile, working out the costs of supplying the gas from the Oman pipeline.