Reliance Industries, the country's largest private sector exploration and production company, expects to complete its 1,400 km pipeline to transport gas from its fields on the offshore Krishna-Godavari basin to its customers on the west coast by the middle of 2008.
The Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) pipeline, which will run from Kakinada on the Andhra Pradesh coast to Jamnagar in the west, will ensure that the entire gas requirement of RIL is met from its KG basin production.
The KG basin fields are expected to produce 80 million standard cubic metres per day. The completion of the pipeline will be synchronised with the first gas from the fields.
It is on the basis of the assured availability of the KG basin gas that RIL has made a bid for the 2,184 mega watt Dabhol power plant.
The pipeline is also expected to give gas-starved industries access to gas. The current deficit in natural gas demand-supply in the country is pegged at 100 mmscmd.
The project is being implemented by RIL's wholly-owned subsidiary Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure. All the materials required for the pipeline have been sourced, and the construction work is expected to be completed by the middle of the next financial year.
Meanwhile, speaking at the annual general body meeting of group company Indian Petrochemicals Corporation, Mukesh Ambani, the group chairman, outlined Rs 350 crore (Rs 3.5 billion) plans for IPCL.
These include expansion of the gas cracker capacity by 12,000 tonne at the Baroda plant, the gas-processing capacity at Gandhar from 9 to 11 mmscmd and the cracker capacity at Gandhar by 65,000 tonne.
These projects, Ambani told shareholders, would be completed by the end of next year.
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