New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) The government has taken various measures to enhance the availability of natural gas for power generation, which include expansion of the National Gas Grid to connect domestic gas sources as well as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminals to power plants, the Parliament was informed on Thursday.

Introducing a unified tariff, setting up of LNG Terminals, allowing the domestic gas producers who have been granted pricing and marketing freedom to sell domestic gas up to 500 million standard cubic metre (mmscm) or 10 per cent of annual production from their contract area whichever is higher, per year through gas exchanges authorized by PNGRB, are the other among the steps that the government ha s taken to make natural gas available, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Suresh Gopi told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

He also said that the government has placed LNG under the Open General Licence (OGL) category, and this allows buyers to freely import LNG as per their requirement on mutually agreed commercial terms with suppliers.

The government has also made provisions for nil customs duty on the import of LNG, if it is used for the generation of electricity by a generating company as defined in section 2(28) of the Electricity Act, 2003 (36 of 2003), to supply electrical energy or to engage in the business of supplying electrical energy to the grid.

Gas-based power plants are free to import the LNG, generate power and sell it to customers, the minister said.

Additionally, the government has taken multiple steps to increase the share of Natural Gas in the primary energy mix.

These, inter alia, includes expansion of the National Gas Grid Pipeline, expansion of City Gas Distribution (CGD) network, setting up of LNG Terminals, allocation of domestic gas to Compressed Natural Gas as priority sector, allowing marketing and pricing freedom with a ceiling price to gas produced from high pressure and high temperature areas, deep water and ultra-deep water and from coal seams, sustainable alternative towards affordable transportation (SATAT) initiatives to promote CBG.

–IANS

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