Playing safe, an empowered panel of ministers on Friday chose not to cut of the quota of gas allotted for the key fertiliser sector and decided that after being utilised, if any surplus natural resource is left out from its share, then it would be provided to the power sector and this understanding would continue till March 2016.
The empowered Group of Ministers (eGoM) headed by Defence Minister A K Antony, which is looking into the priority allocation of gas in the aftermath of depleting production of the natural resource from the KG-D6 fields, amid intense pressure from the Fertiliser Ministry, had in its first meeting on July 17 decided that the supply to it would not be re-prioritised. Rather it had asked the Petroleum Ministry to rejig gas distribution across the country.
Subsequently in Friday’s meeting, which was held after four postponements, it was decided that fertiliser sector’s requirements would continue to get top priority and from its quota of 31 mmscmd of gas if surplus is left, then it would given to the power sector.
In fact, the Fertiliser Ministry has been vehemently opposing any move to re-prioritise gas allocation to the power sector and had countered the Power Ministry’s request to seek priority, by stating the fact that while power plants have been mushrooming over the years, fertiliser units have not maintained such a frenetic pace and the last unit to come up in the country was in 1999.
On top of it, the significance of the fertiliser sector in the context of India being an agrarian economy, also led the eGoM to maintain status quo.
“Power projects will get the surplus gas until March 2016, after which the situation will be reviewed again. The decision will benefit projects with a combined capacity of over 7,800 MW,” Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told reporters after the meeting of the empowered panel.
Gas-based fertiliser plants have topmost priority in the allocation of gas, followed by lPG-extraction units, power projects, city gas, steel and refineries.