New Delhi: As India is in the sudden grip of a power crisis, public sector undertaking – GAIL India – has risen to avert the crisis by offering and supplying natural gas as per the contract and requirement of all customers including power plants in the National Capital Territory (NCT), and is making available the required volume of natural gas to the power plants.

“GAIL has been offering and supplying natural gas as per contract and requirement of all customers including the power plants in NCT. GAIL continues to make available the required volume of natural gas to the power plants. Considering the current tight international LNG spot market, GAIL has also sought additional RLNG demand from the power plants for the coming festival days so that necessary imports could be made in time,” said ES Ranganathan, Director, Marketing, GAIL (India).

GAIL (India) Limited is India’s leading natural gas company with diversified interests across the natural gas value chain of trading, transmission, LPG production and transmission, LNG regasification, petrochemicals, city gas, E&P, etc. It owns and operates a network of around 13,340 km of natural gas pipelines spread across the length and breadth of the country. It is also working concurrently on execution of multiple pipeline projects to further enhance the spread.

Meanwhile, the Union Ministry of Power has listed four reasons for the depletion of coal stocks, including an unprecedented increase in demand for electricity due to the revival of the economy, after Chief Ministers of Delhi, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh flagged the issue of shortage of coal at power plants. The Power Ministry has said that an inter-ministerial sub-group led by the ministry of coal has been monitoring the coal stock situation twice a week as declining coal reserves sparked concerns of a power crisis in the country.

“There are four reasons for the depletion of coal stocks at the power plant end- unprecedented increase in demand for electricity due to the revival of the economy; heavy rains in coal mine areas during September 2021 thereby adversely affecting the coal production as well as despatch of coal from mines; increase in prices of imported coal to unprecedented high level leading to a substantial reduction in power generation from imported coal-based power plants leading to more dependence on domestic coal; non-building of adequate coal stocks before the onset of Monsoon,” said the ministry said in a release. /BI/