Energy Sector - 2

[Naresh]

[center]<b><span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>India plans gas pipeline from Oman</span></b>[/center]

<b>NEW DELHI : With two proposed overland transnational pipelines through Pakistan caught in geopolitical knots, fresh efforts have been launched to revive a long-buried plan of establishing an international energy lifeline under Arabian Sea to feed gas to India’s fuel-guzzling economy from West Asia.</b>

The tensions between the United States and Iran and concerns over security situation in Afghanistan have bogged down progress on the pipelines from Iran and Turkmenistan, respectively. With India’s gas demand expected to overshoot 200 million cubic metres a day from 170 at present, an engineering construction conglomerate, which has former petroleum secretary T N R Rao as key member in the project team, has moved in to fill the void, the Times of India reported.

<b>Since December 2007 through February, South Asia Gas Enterprise (SAGE) has given presentations to power, oil ministries, state-owned generation utility National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), gas utility GAIL, flagship refiner Indian Oil, Tata group, fertilizer companies besides government-run engineering consultancy firm Engineers India Ltd.</b>

SAGE revived the proposal for laying a pipeline under sea between Oman’s Ras al Jifan and coastal Gujarat’s Rapar Gadhwali to ferry about 8 tcf (trillion cubic feet) of gas.

<b>Its presentation said gas could flow as early as 2012 and projected a requirement of $2.1-3.4 billion investment and a (transportation) tariff of around $1.1 to $ 1.8 per mbtu (million British thermal unit).</b>

It skirted issue of identifying specific gas source, saying “over 2,000 tcf reserves are reported to be available in the Middle East”, implying a common carrier nature. Several major gas pipelines around the world run under sea. Even Pakistan has a joint venture with Persian Gulf-South Asia ((P-Gusa) gas company of Qatar for laying a deep sea pipeline linking two countries for bringing gas to Gwadar port and China is planning to tap into it once - if at all - it is built.

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