The government is working to increase the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket by two- and-a- half times from 6 percent to 15 per cent.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, inaugurating the 450-km-long and Rs 3,000 crore Kochi-Mangalore natural gas pipeline on Tuesday, said the government is working to shift to a natural gas-based economy through the ‘one nation one gas grid’ project.
Noting that a young India could no longer move slowly, the PM said there were reasons why the country’s development pace was slow during the past century.
“There would have been reasons why India moved at the speed it moved in the last century but today’s young India is keen to capture the world and cannot walk slowly,” the PM said.
He listed a range of figures to argue how the NDA government had ensured escalation of speed, scale and scope in recent days. He said the first inter-state natural gas pipeline was commissioned in 1987 and then until 2014, only 15,000 km of natural gas pipeline was laid.
“Today the work is in progress on a 16,000 km pipeline which is to be completed in the next four to six years. So we aim to conclude in half the time the work that was done in 27 years,” he said. He said the first CNG station in India started around 1992 and in 22 years till 2014, only 900 stations were set up.
“In the last six years over 1,500 stations have started and the aim is to raise the number to 10, 000,” Modi said. He said the gas pipeline commissioned today would help set up 700 CNG stations in Kerala and Karnataka.
On piped natural gas, the PM said till 2014, 25 lakh connections had been given while today 72 lakh houses had piped gas.
The Kochi-Mangalore pipeline will benefit 21 lakh additional people with PNG.
