Expanding the reach of environment friendly Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in various areas, Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan dedicated 42 CNG stations and 3 City Gate Stations of Torrent Gas to the service of the community. All CNG stations and City Gate Stations were connected through video conference during the event with the Minister. Torrent Gas has the authorization to lay City Gas Distribution (CGD) network in 32 Districts across 7 States and 1 UT. These CNG stations are located across various states, including 14 in Uttar Pradesh, 8 in Maharashtra, 6 in Gujarat, 4 in Punjab and 5 each in Telangana and Rajasthan. The City Gate Stations include one each in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab.
Speaking on the occasion, Shri Pradhan called upon all CGD agencies to grow into the Comprehensive Energy Retailers. Government has visualized that consumers, as per their purchasing capacity and their choice of fuel, should be able to buy any type of fuel from the retail outlet- be it petrol, diesel, CNG, LNG or electric charging. He said that Development of CGD network in India is in line with the PM’s vision to achieve the COP-21 Climate Change goals set for 2030. Pradhan said that an investment of about $60 billion which is more than Rs 4 lakh crore, is being made in the gas infrastructure which includes laying of pipelines, terminals, gas fields. He called upon the CGD companies to also invest in the biomass-based plants to produce Compressed Bio-gas, using agriculture residues, forest produce, city waste and Gobar.
Number of CNG stations have increased to more than double in the country, from 938 CNG station in year 2014 to around 2,300 CNG stations in 2020. Together with the existing CNG stations and the ones expected under 9th and 10th rounds, India is looking at a robust infrastructure of about 10,000 CNG stations in coming years. The 9th CGD bidding round which concluded in 2018, was India’s largest ever with as many as 174 districts with 86 GAs. The 10th CGD bidding round covering 124 districts with 50 GAs again witnessed huge interest from investors. 9th & 10th rounds cumulatively attracts an investment of around Rs 1,20,000 crores. After these rounds, India shall have CGD infrastructure operational across 407 districts of the country having potential of covering more than 50% of country’s area and serving more than 70% of the population.
Such large capacity addition in the CGD sector is expected to provide strong demand for PNG meters, PNG regulators, CNG compressors, CNG dispensers and CNG cascades in the forthcoming years. The existence of such assured demand from the CGD sector will provide a strong incentive to increase domestic manufacturing and promote Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan and making clean fuel available in various parts of the Country.
