Adani-IOC, GAIL in race to supply piped gas to Bangalore, 13 cities

In all, 44 bids were received with Bengaluru being the most sought after and Andhra Pradesh/Telengana faring poorly

Adani Gas-Indian Oil combine and state gas utility GAIL were among nearly a dozen firms bid for licenses to retail CNG and piped cooking gas in 14 cities including Bangalore and Pune.

Other firms that bid for city gas distribution licences at the close of bidding yesterday included Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), Gujarat Gas and GSPC, sources said.

Oil regulator PNGRB had in September last year invited bids for development of CGD networks in Ernakulam in Kerala; Rangareddy/Medak, Nalgonda and Khammam in Andhra Pradesh / Telengana; Bang- alore rural and urban districts in Karnataka; Raigarh, Pune and Thane in Maharashtra; Daman; Dadar & Nagar Haveli; Shahjahanpur in UP; Guna in MP; Panipat in Haryana and Amritsar in Punjab. In all 44 bids were received with Bangalore being the most sought after and Andhra Pradesh / Telengana faring poorly.

Adani-IOC combine bid for Ernakulam, Bangalore, Daman, Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Amritsar and Panipat. GAIL Gas Ltd, the city gas distribution arm of GAIL, bid for Bangalore, Amritsar, Panipat, Daman and Dadar and Nagar Haveli. Bangalore got eight bids from firms like Adani-IOC, GAIL Gas, GSPC, HPCL and BPCL while Pune got two bids from Mahesh Infra and Maharashtra Natural Gas Ltd, they said.

Bid for the latest round of City Gas Distribution (CGD) licences were originally due on 11 February but Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) in January extended the deadline to May 12. On April 23, it extended bid deadline to July 10 and last month it further pushed it back to August 11. Bidders had been asked to quote the tariff they will charge for the pipeline network to be laid in the city and the compression charge for dispensing CNG (compressed natural gas) over the next 25 years.

They have also been asked to quote the inch-kilometre of steel pipelines they will lay during first five years and the number of domestic consumers proposed to be connected by piped natural gas, according to the regulator. The cities offered for bidding include those that PNGRB had offered in the fourth CGD round in September 2010.

The regulator had, however, cancelled the round in November 2011. In the fourth round, licences for Ernakulam in Kerala; Rangareddy/Medak, Nalgonda and Khammam in Andhra Pradesh; Alibag/Pen and Lonavala/Khapoli in Maharashtra; Guna in MP and Shahjahanpur in UP were offered. The present round is being called 4th round of CGD bidding, PNGRB said in the notice inviting bids.