GAIL plans Rs 9,750 cr investment in Kerala

GAIL (India) Ltd will invest Rs 9,750 crore (Rs 97.5 billion) in Kerala through four major projects, which will be cleared within two months by the board as part of downstream projects of proposed LNG terminal at Puthuvype near Kochi.

Prasantho Banerjee, CMD of GAIL said here at a press meet, Rs 70,00 crore (Rs 700 billion) gas-based petrochemical complex at Ambalamugal (Kochi division of FACT) will be the major project followed by the Kochi -Kannur-Coimbatore-Bangalore, 900 km gas pipeline project with a total outlay of Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion).

By adding an investment of Rs 2,400 crore (Rs 24 billion) for the LNG terminal, the combined investment of GAIL and Petronet LNG Limited in Kerala will be of Rs 12,000 crore (Rs 120 billion). He also said that the civil work of the terminal will commence by June 2006 and gas will be pumped from here in the last quarter of 2009.

The sub-sea pipeline to Kayamkulam thermal power station of NTPC and Kochi piped gas project in line with Indraprastha Gas in New Delhi are the two other projects proposed by GAIL and the combined investment for the projects will be Rs 750 crore (Rs 7.5 billion). The piped gas project will be implemented in association with BPCL and Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation.

GAIL is also in the process of attracting FDI for proposals and according to him discussions are on in this regard. He also said GAIL had already had contracts for importing gas from RAS Gas of Qatar to the tune of 15 million tonne annually for both Dahej and Kochi terminals. Discussion for similar contracts with Iran is going on.

The contracts for bringing gas to the terminals will be awarded by October and tender documents to the four interested companies for the construction of the terminal would be supplied within a couple of weeks.

"All our projects are firmly on track and are ready to go ahead as per schedules. In order to assess the impact of tsunami we had conducted further surveys and studies at Puthuvype," he added.

P Dasguptha, CEO, PLL said that marketing of LNG is not a problem as there were demands to the tune of 5.5 million tonne annually in south India excluding Karnataka.