STATE-OWNED GAIL India Ltd plans to lay a pipeline to Srinagar to take the environment-friendly natural gas to the Kashmir Valley as it doubles down on efforts to expand infrastructure to helm the Government vision of a gas-based economy, its Chairman and Managing Director Manoj Jain said. GAIL will by May 2023 complete a 700-km pipeline from Mumbai to Nagpur, enabling the flow of gas to central India and is on track to meeting the target of mid-2022 for completing major portions of the ambitious Urja Ganga project, bringing eastern India on the energy map, he said. Gas pipelines are planned to take the fuel to the east and north-east regions as well as to consumers in the south as part of the Government push to raise the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket to 15 per cent by 2030 from the current 6.7 per cent.

 

GAIL is also laying a 1,405 km pipeline from Mumbai to Jharsuguda (Odisha) via Nagpur and Raipur in Chhattisgarh. “The section up to Nagpur will be commissioned by May 2023,” he said adding that the remaining length will come in the next two years. Currently, the total natural gas pipeline network in India is about 18,700 km, of which 12,500 km is operated by GAIL. GAIL, which sells two-thirds of all-natural gas sold in the country, will add 7,000 km of pipeline length in the next five years, Jain said. GAIL’s push for infrastructure creation is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of creating a gas-based economy that is less reliant on polluting fuels for meeting its energy needs.