It seems that the immense mismatch between the projected demand and supply of gas for power plants to be commissioned in the XIIth Plan is making the power ministry try a variety of permutations and combinations in a bid to ration the fuel. While it had accepted, with certain minor changes, the parameters proposed by the CEA in its draft policy outline, released in March 2010, the ministry has now come out with a new measure to ensure what it considers the optimum distribution of the limited domestic natural gas. The Ministry of Power has now asserted that in view of the ongoing importance being attached to the efficient use of energy, the economical use of the fuel should be encouraged, via assignment of a higher priority to projects being executed with Advance Class Machines. Notably, these state of the art gas generation equipment have efficiencies of between 57-58%. As a comparison, even the latest ultra supercritical coal based power plants (which are non-existent in India) have efficiencies of only up to 50%, in most cases. In addition, the Ministry of Power has called for higher priority of allocation to projects in Special Economic Zones, with a view to further enhance their attractiveness to investors. Further, as it is inherently easier, with respect to regulatory and land acquisition issues, to expand existing projects than to set up new ones, brownfield projects, according to the MoP, should be allowed first dips on natural gas in the XIIth Plan. The ministry has also called for inclusion of placement of orders for equipment as one of the criteria to be used to determine the allocation of natural gas. The CEA has now been called on to furnish its comments on the ministry's arguments, so that a final set of parameters can expeditiously be evolved and, hopefully, this lack of clarity can be done away with.
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