NTPC seeks offshore gas at market rates

NEW DELHI: State-run NTPC is seeking natural gas from the offshore Panna/Mukta and Tapti fields, jointly operated by British Gas, Reliance Industries and ONGC, at market rates to meet feedstock deficit at its power plants.

NTPC has sought the 5 million standard cubic meters per day additional gas to be produced from Tapti field from the last quarter.

Power Secretary Anil Razdan last month wrote to Oil Secretary M S Srinivasan to favourably consider NTPC's request for allocation of additional gas.

"NTPC has already taken up with ONGC and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas the earmarking of enhanced production," Razdan wrote.

Presently, the PMT joint venture sells about 6 mmscmd gas to GAIL for power and fertiliser consumers at 4.75 dollars per million British thermal unit (mBtu). The joint venture is directly marketing the remaining 4.8 mmscmd.

"We had earlier made a request to Petroleum Ministry to consider allocating this (additional) gas to NTPC at the prevalent market price or at any other price decided by them. We have also made similar request to the Cabinet Secretary (on February 22 and March 19)," NTPC Chairman T Sankaralingam wrote to his ONGC counterpart R S Sharma in April.

"We shall be grateful if this gas is allocated to power sector to ensure that stranded generation capacity, as available, is fully utilised and provide power to consumers at a reasonable and affordable price," he wrote.

NTPC, which currently gets 2.1 mmscmd of gas from the western offshore PMT fields, is facing perpetual shortage of gas of about 6-7 mmscmd, leaving 1,500 MW of capacity stranded for want of fuel.

This shortage is being relatively met through costlier sport-LNG at a price levels of $11-12 per mBtu.

"The situation appears further grim considering the fact that the availability of APM gas (price of which is regulated by government) is on a gradual decline and the availability of joint venture/private gas is on an increase," Sankaralingam had, on July 24, 2006, written in a separate letter to then Power Secretary R V Shahi.

By 2011-12, APM gas will go down from the present level of about 55 mmscmd to about 38 mmscmd, he had stated.