Indraprastha Gas, India's biggest city gas retailer, plans to add a record 60 CNG dispensing stations and give piped cooking gas connections to at least 2 lakh households this fiscal as it steps up efforts to achieve the government's target of a gas-based economy.
IGL Managing Director E S Ranganathan said the company, which retails CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to household kitchens in Delhi and its suburbs, has adopted a dealer-franchise model in the push for rapidly expanding the network.
The company, with 452 CNG stations in Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad and Rewari, has started to give the franchise to dealers who own lands. "We already have two CNG dispensing stations operating on dealer model and have given letters of intent (LoI) for another 21 which will be commissioned within the current financial year," he said.
Ranganathan said the company opened 30 CNG stations last year and in the current financial year running from April 2018 to March 2019 it has a target to open 50. "Though the target is 50, we are confident of putting up 60 stations," he said.
The company, which currently has over 9.6 lakh piped cooking gas customers, has a target to add 3 lakh this fiscal.
"We gave 1.5 lakh piped natural gas (PNG) connections in last financial year and this year we are confident of crossing 2 lakh. We can achieve 3 lakh target is areas currently out of bound like Cantonment areas are opened up for us to lay pipelines and give connections in kitchens," he said.
The government is aggressively pushing for use of CNG as a transportation fuel to cut on use of polluting liquid fuels like diesel. It also wants PNG to replace costlier LPG in kitchens with a view to cut oil import dependence and push up the share of natural gas in the country's energy basket to 15 per cent from current 6.2 per cent.
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India currently imports 81 per cent of its oil needs.
In its push towards a gas-based economy, the government is targeting 1 crore PNG connections by 2020.
The country, currently, has 45.26 lakh household kitchens using natural gas as cooking fuel. Gujarat has the highest number of PNG users at 19.07 lakh, followed by Maharashtra at 12.73 lakh. Delhi ranks third. Both, Gujarat and Maharashtra have multiple companies retailing CNG and PNG.
Ranganathan said IGL is committed to achieving the targets in the push towards a gas-based economy.
"We are trying new innovations to increase the penetration," he said.
IGL previously used to set up CNG dispensing stations only on a franchise model where outlet together with land belonged to the company and a dealer was appointed to run it. Now, it is giving franchises to dealers who own land.
In 2018-19, the government is targeting 20 lakh PNG connections all over the country, up from 12 lakh of 2017-18. In 2019-20, the target is 40 lakh.