Plea to supply gas to power units

vadodara: the farm leaders, trading and business community. the industries associations, power experts and others are of the view that the committed supply of natural gas to the gas based thermal power stations in gujarat can help in tiding over the power shortage. they contend that the average generation of power from the gas based units is 600 mw as against their totalled installed capacity of 2035 mw.even in summer, if this commitment if fully met, it can help in tiding over the worst period on power front but that requires a strong political backing. this suggestion was made to union petroleum and natural gas minister ram naik some time ago. farmers are agitated as they do not get adequate supply which could enable them to save their standing crop. they are all mobbing electric sub stations with their pleas. the geb has to suffer heavy losses as it has to buy power from the independent power producers (ipps) and others at a high cost to meet the power demand of the farm sector. gas-based thermal units at vadodara, jhanor, kawas, pagothan, ahmedabad, dhuvara and utran have been unable to generate power as per their installed capacity due to non-allocation of committed assured quantity of gas to them. the totalled installed capacity of geb and other agencies owned gas based power stations in the state is 2035 mw of power. this was stated in memorandum presented to petroleum minister naik. it comes to around 35 % of the gujarat''s totalled installed capacity of 8506 mw. this includes state''s proportionate share of allocation of power from the central power projects and power stations owned by ahmedabad electricity company and ipps. as against the assured allocation of 27 lakh cubic metre of gas per day for all the gas based power stations in the state, the allocation is 17 lakh cubic metre. this is also not fully supplied and this was brought to the notice of union minister naik by chief minister narendra modi. geb has been paying rs 80 crore as fixed cost to all the ipps every month without their generating any power due to non availability of gas. this is due to power purchase agreements with them. when geb seeks power from them, these ipps have to use naphtha, a costlier fuel. this makes power purchase a costlier affair. geb had to buy 3300 lakhs units of power last year. even dr vijay kelkar, in his report on pricing of gas submitted to the government of india suggested that gas should be provided to these gas based and coal based thermal power stations in the overall interest of the nation. additionally, over rs 1,000 crore are required to be borne by geb compared to neighbouring states merely to transport coal. this sheer wastage of national resources is a heavy burden on the consumers in the state.