State-run Gail (India) Ltd on Monday said it will hive off its gas trading business into a separate company by 2008, by when the ambitious Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) national gas pipeline grid will be in place.\n\n\n\n
The government will allow exploration firm Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Gas Authority of India to market domestic LPG to increase penetration of cooking fuel to 75 per cent of the population.
ONGC Videsh-GAIL India consortium, which holds 30 per cent interest in recently-discovered gas field in offshore Myanmar, is eyeing 50 per cent stake of South Korean Daewoo International in an adjacent gas block.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and a joint venture of billionaire Gautam Adani's gas arm and Total of France -- Adani Total Gas Ltd -- have bid for maximum number of licenses to retail CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in the latest city gas bidding round.
The competition between the two main players vying to lay cross-country natural gas pipelines has undergone a volte-face.
The world's third largest oil firm Royal Dutch/Shell has offered state-run gas firm Gail (India) Ltd a 15 per cent stake in an offshore medium sized gas field in Egypt.
It would be complete by 2012 with a total investment of over Rs 11,300 crore, including an estimated Rs 2,300 crore from RIL and Rs 9,000 crore from GAIL. Analysts say refineries -- Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals, Chennai Petroleum Corporation, Essar, Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation -- located in the vicinity of these pipelines would benefit as they would be able to substitute costly fuel oil with cheaper gas.
The Petroleum Ministry in an order on Wednesday said it has revised guidelines for allocation/supply of domestic natural gas to city gas distribution entities for CNG and piped cooking gas sector.
India's purchase of US crude oil has picked up in 2025 and could easily double their previous levels, government officials said on Wednesday. The surge comes in the wake of the then-incoming Donald Trump administration's announcement that it would consider hiking tariffs on a reciprocal basis, and pushed some countries, especially those with large trade surpluses with the US, to buy more of its energy.
So far, GMTS has defaulted on the supply of more than 20 cargoes or shiploads, 13 of which were set to be received in the second quarter (July-September), officials said.
ONGC Videsh Ltd and GAIL, the two Indian partners in Daewoo's recent Shwe gas discovery off Myanmar, may have to buy their way into the field as they did not contribute to the drilling cost of the first well.
GAIL is in the process of laying additional pipelines in the Dadri-Bawana-Nangal and Chainsna-Jhajjar-Hissar region so as to serve the Northern market and this year alone around 1,000 km were laid, he said at a seminar on 'Energy Self Sufficiency -- The Future' organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Chennai on Friday.
Chinese import tariffs have unwittingly come to India's assistance to help boost imports of US liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) at rates cheaper than what it pays for supplies from West Asia, according to industry sources and shipping data.
With India making it clear that the US doesn't have enough spare capacity for crude oil, Washington, DC, now wants India to sign fixed-term liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts with American producers, multiple sources in the know said.
The Cairn-ONGC-Videocon consortium had last month written to the petroleum ministry seeking a 57 per cent hike in the Ravva Satellite field gas price citing provision in the Production Sharing Contract for the field.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Adani-Total Gas Ltd and Shell were among the 29 companies that bid and bought natural gas to be produced from the deepest field in the KG-D6 block of Reliance Industries Ltd and bp, sources said. IOC walked away with almost half of the 6 million standard cubic meters per day of gas sold in an e-auction on Wednesday while state-owned gas utility GAIL bought 0.7 mmscmd, Adani-Total Gas Ltd 0.4 mmscmd, Shell 0.5 mmscmd, GSPC 0.25 mmscmd and IGS another 0.5 mmscmd, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. Reliance-bp on Wednesday held an e-auction for sale of gas from the MJ field in their eastern offshore KG-D6 block after incorporating the government's new marketing rules to give CNG-selling city gas companies first priority over supplies.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh allowed ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas investment arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, to invest $167.84 million in taking 8.35 per cent stake in the pipeline.
With two more persons succumbing to their burn injuries on Sunday, the toll in Friday's deadly fire-blast, apparently caused by leakage from a GAIL gas pipeline in Nagaram, Andhra Pradesh, rose to 19 even as the condition of at least three others remains critical, police said.
The state-run power utility NTPC Ltd has signed an agreement to buy gas from GAIL India for 10 years at a delivered price of close to $8 per million British thermal unit.
The government has slashed by up to a fifth the supplies of cheaper gas to city gas entities that retail CNG to automobiles, increasing their dependence in costly imported fuel. Buying costly imported gas to make up for the shortfall should result in a hike in CNG price but given the ensuing assembly elections in Maharashtra, that may be put off for now. Indraprastha Gas Ltd and Mahanagar Gas Ltd in regulatory filings stated that supplies of domestically produced gas, which was available at a capped rate which is half of the imported price, has been cut.
Escalation of the conflict in West Asia between Israel and Iran has had a direct impact on the energy markets, and more broadly on the financial markets as well as the global economy.
The world's third largest oil firm Royal Dutch/Shell has objected to state-run Gail India Ltd being made the sole agency to build the Rs 20,000 crore
While previously selling of the marketing business, possibly to another state-owned firm, was being considered, the government is now mulling on hiving off the pipelines into a separate entity and selling off a majority stake in it.
Reliance gets $4.215 per mmBtu for the gas it produces from KG-D6 fields off the Andhra coast. The price is fixed for the first five years of production. KG-D6 gas production began on April 2 and is slated to rise to 80 mmscmd by year-end, nearly doubling the nation's gas output.
Eight companies including Reliance Gas Ltd, GAIL Gas and the joint venture of Indian Oil and Adani Energy have bid for the rights to retail CNG in seven cities.
'The universe of PSU stocks is huge and diverse.' 'Investors should bet on specific sectors and stocks from the basket as most of them may continue to consolidate after years of outperformance.'
The government has slashed by up to 20 per cent the supplies of cheaper domestically produced natural gas to city retailers -- a move that may result in Rs 4-6 per kg hike in the price of CNG sold to automobiles, unless excise duty on the fuel is cut, sources said. Natural gas pumped from below the ground and from under the seabed from sites ranging from the Arabian Sea to Bay of Bengal within India is the raw material that is turned into CNG for sale to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households.
The petroleum ministry has blamed negligence for causing the devastating fire at state-owned gas transporter GAIL India Ltd's gas pipeline in Andhra Pradesh that killed 22 people.
Reliance Gas, which had successfully bid for three cities -- Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh, Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh and Yanam in Pondicherry -- during the second round of bidding for CGD in 2009.
State-run gas utility GAIL India on Monday said it should be exempted from payment of fuel subsidies as it does not get any upside from rise in crude oil or natural gas price.
GAIL will have 36 months to lay and commission the pipeline with a capacity to transport up to 60 mscmd of gas.
Low gas prices and weakness in petchem margins lead to lower earnings estimates for GAIL.
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