Natural gas has been hogging the limelight world over for the past year or so, and for once, I am glad that the right things are being heard about. Let me clarify, I am no fan of anything fossil (unless it some sort of a dino fossil with which I can re-excite my childish curiosities), but we are gonna live with fossil fuels for quite a while, and we might as well use the least harmful of the lot.
I’m in exalted company when I speak about natural gas with a fair bit of affection. Billionaire oilman Boone Pickens likes NG as well (though I’m afraid what’s common between us two ends there).
So it was with a lot of interest that I read about our government’s plan to make gas supply better across the country.
The Indian government is planning to build a national gas highway network across the country to transport the environment friendly fuel to regions untouched till now.
Natural gas has in India transformed regions through which the nation’s first cross-country Hazira-Vijaipur-Jagdishpur (HVJ) pipeline passed (You can get an idea of critical HVJ pipeline from this page). But there is no infrastructure to transport gas to southern and eastern regions. Even the northern region is not completely covered.
Therefore the need for a natural gas highway.
Most of the domestic (about 105 mcm per day from fields in western and eastern offshore) and import gas (25 mmcmd imported in the form of LNG at Gujarat) is consumed in Gujarat and along the HVJ.