In a first step to facilitate gas trading on hub or exchange traded platforms in India, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas & Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan, on Monday launched an online portal for enabling easy, efficient and transparent booking of common carrier capacity for natural gas transmission services under GAIL’s pipelines.
The portal is accessible on www. gailonline.com and was launched in the presence of PNGRB chairperson D K Sarraf, GAIL Chairman & Managing Director BC Tripathi, GAIL Director (Marketing) Gajendra Singh, MoPNG, Joint Secretary Ashish Chatterjee and other dignitaries from Ministry and Regulatory Board.
The portal operates within the regulatory framework and is the first of its kind in the natural gas sector of India, to provide gas consumers the facility to register pipeline capacity bookings online and endeavours to continue the practice of serving on first-come-first-serviced basis.
Speaking on the occasion, Tripathi said: “With this online initiative, GAIL has raised the standards of consumer experience for third-party access to natural gas pipelines to consumers in India. GAIL has been providing third party access to pipelines since 2004 and over 100-150 consumers small and large are routinely being serviced at any time, during the last few years.”
Gas trading entities such as- IOCL, BPCL, RIL, GSPC, etc., and consumers such as- M/s CFCL, NFL, IFFCO, KRIBHCO, Jindal Aluminium, Toyota Kirloskar, Suzuki Motorcycle, Tata Ceramics, Hindalco etc., have been availing the pipeline transmission services as third party users of capacities on GAIL’s pipeline networks.
Out of the total earmarked Common Carrier capacity in various GAIL’s pipelines, around 33 per cent of the Common Carrier capacity was used by third party shippers during FY 2017-18. Under PNGRB guidelines, up to 25 per cent of the total pipeline capacity is to be earmarked for Common Carrier capacity, i.e., for providing non-discriminatory open-access on first-come-first-served basis, for transporting third party gas for a period of less than one year.
GAIL is India’s largest integrated natural gas company with more than 11,400 kms of natural gas pipelines operating across various parts of the country. At present, it is working on increasing the gas grid by another 5,000 km, including the Jagdishpur-Haldia & Bokaro-Dhamra and Barauni-Guwahati pipeline (known as the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga Project) which will connect eastern and north-eastern India.
