The board of Gail (India) Ltd has approved the 730-km Dabhol-Bangalore gas pipeline. The 30" diameter pipeline designed to carry 16 mmscmd of gas will need an investment of Rs 2,500 crore. The pipeline will carry regasified LNG from the gas terminal of Ratnagiri Gas & Power Pvt. Ltd and supply it to industrial clusters in Maharashtra and Karnataka. It will pass through Ratnagiri and Kolhapur districts before entering Karnataka where it will travel across the districts of Belgaum, Dharwad, Haveri, Davengere, Chitradurga, Tumkur and Bangalore. The final investment approval will be subject to project appraisal, customer identification and freezing of design parameters.
Other pipelines: The Dabhol-Bangalore pipeline is among the five new pipelines for which Gail received authorisation in early 2007. The other four are: Dadri-Bawana-Nangal, Chainsa-Gurgaon-Jhajjhar-Hissar, Jagdishpur-Haldia and Kochi-Kanjirkkod-Bangalore/Mangalore.
Gail will also be laying three pipelines to augment the capacities of Dahej-Vijaipur pipeline, Vijaipur-Dadri pipeline, Vijaipur-Auraiya-Jagdishpur pipeline. The carrying capacity of these three pipelines will be 74 mmscmd.
Impact: The total length of these eight new pipelines will be around 5,500 km and will involve an investment of Rs 20,000 crore. When these are commissioned by 2011-12, Gail's total pipeline network will increase to 12,000 km with an aggregate carrying capacity of 300 mmscmd, as against the current 148 mmscmd.