Gas pipeline project faces delays

The Centre’s ambitious Rs 12,000 crore Jagdishpur-Haldia gas pipeline project, which aims to create a gas corridor across eastern India and will also pass through Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, is finding it hard to take off owing to delays in land acquisition.

The first phase of the project, that seeks to ensure cooking gas supply in Tier-II cities of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, is only 11 per cent complete despite having been approved 18 months ago.

With eyes firmly on the forthcoming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Mr Modi, who was instrumental in reviving the 10-year-old project, is learnt to have taken a stern view over the delay and has directed chief secretaries of both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to expedite the process.

The deadline for the completion of the first phase is December 2018. The entire project was approved by the Centre in March 2015. The project has a total of three phases.

In a meeting held recently to discuss the project, the Prime Minister is reported to have been apprised of the fact that owing to non-availability of updated land ownership details in village records, especially in Bihar, the land acquisition process has been affected.

Mr Modi, sources privy to the development told this newspaper, directed chief secretaries of both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to ensure that full-time revenue officers are appointed to expedite the process of land acquisition. He also asked the states to ensure faster forest clearance so that the execution of the first phase of the project begins earnestly.

Top sources privy to the development told this newspaper that the first phase of the over 2,500km-long pipeline project, which consists of setting up a trunk pipeline from Phulpur (Allahabad) till Dobhi (Gaya) in Bihar is only 11 per cent physically complete, and its financial progress is just four per cent. The total distance of the first phase is 755 km.

B.C. Tripathi, chairperson of the state-owned Gas Authority of India Ltd, which is implementing the project, had said earlier in 2016 that while the first phase of the project will be completed by December 2018, the completion of the second and third phases will depend on the fertiliser plants coming up in the region.

In Phase-II, a 1,200 km line would be laid from Dobhi to Bokaro/Ranchi in Jharkhand and Angul and Dhamra in Odisha at the cost of Rs 5,565 crore.

The third phase will involve laying of 583-km line to Haldia at the cost of Rs 3,425 crore.

Four urea plants in Gorakhpur, Barauni, Durgapur and Haldia as well as one steel plant in Sindri are also part of the ambitious project, which has been expedited at the instance of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Though the Jagdishpur-Haldia pipeline project had been envisaged in 2007 by GAIL at a cost of Rs 7,600 crore, it got incessantly delayed owing to the Maharatna company’s inability to find an anchor investor.

However, more significantly, FCIL’s Gorakhpur and Sindri fertiliser units and HFCL’s Haldia, Durgapur and Barauni units - which are all located at significant points of Jagdish-Haldia pipeline’s route - had gone defunct since both FCIL and HFCL had been referred to BIFR, and it is only in the recent years when their revival has been ordered.

The fast tracking of the project has been mainly due to PMO’s direct intervention, as its implementation will not only enable gas supply in key States of UP and Bihar, but its easy availability in these densely populated States will also widen GAIL’s gas network there. Once this happens, sources pointed out, the project’s functioning will help in lessening the gas subsidy burden on the Government in the long run.

Official sources pointed that despite being a crucial region - with both UP and Bihar falling within the Gangetic plan - there is huge paucity of gas there, and the Jagdishpur-Haldia project will be crucial for the overall development of the area.