The ministry of petroleum and natural gas has allowed power companies to club or divert the allocated gas between two or more power plants of the same company so as to improve the plant load factor and increase power generation. Following a significant drop in the plant load factor due to acute shortage of gas, the power companies had asked the government to relax the gas allocation policy. At present, gas allocation given to companies (mainly in the power sector) is exclusive to a particular project. This allocated gas is non-transferable even between group companies. With the guidelines in place, power companies will now be able to transfer the allocated gas between their own plants. “The clubbing/diversion, in all spells, should not be for a period of more than a year in total and clubbing/diversion of gas should lead to higher production of electricity compared to pre-clubbing arrangement,” the ministry statement said. The cost of the gas, so diverted, would be in accordance with the price based on the source of the diverted gas so that there is no financial burden on the end consumers. The guidelines will benefit companies such as Adani, Reliance Power, Tata Power, GVK, and GMR who have projects proposed and operational. The power plants would, therefore, have to obtain no objection from the concerned power distribution company to which they are supplying electricity and the ministry of power shall operationalise the arrangement. The oil ministry has made a decision to relax allocation guidelines after domestic gas output fell sharply due to steep decline in natural gas production from Reliance Industries’ KG-D6 block. According to the government, policy gas allocation is done on the basis of priority on a pro-rata basis. Out of the current production from KG D6, 14.84 mmscmd has been sold to fertiliser plants and 5.03 mmscmd to power plants and the remaining 2.9 mmscmd is supplied to other priority sectors.