Wait For Natural Gas To Get Longer In East India As Urja Ganga Pipeline Completion Delayed To March 2025

The completion of the Rs 12,940-crore ‘Urja Ganga’ gas pipeline, India’s most ambitious LNG project, has been delayed by nine months and will now be completed by March 2025, state-owned gas giants GAIL (India) Limited said.

GAIL, the company executing the pipeline, announced that its board of directors approved the revised completion schedule during a meeting on 28 June.

The Jagdishpur-Haldia-Bokaro-Dhamra natural gas pipeline (JHBDPL), popularly known as the Urja Ganga pipeline, was initially targeted for completion by June 2024.

However, due to "delays in right of use (RoU) availability," the completion schedule has been revised "from June 2024 to March 2025," GAIL said in a stock exchange filing.

This 3,306-km-long pipeline is designed to connect the eastern part of India with the National Gas Grid, ensuring the availability of natural gas in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal.

Additionally, through the Barauni-Guwahati pipeline (BGPL), the JHBDPL will connect to the Indradhanush Gas Grid Limited (IGGL)'s North-East Grid, which is under construction. This will eventually serve eight North-Eastern states, including Assam, Sikkim, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, and Meghalaya, in phases.

Most of the JHBDPL pipeline has already been constructed, and gas is flowing to several cities along the route. The pipeline currently supports seven city gas distribution (CGD) projects in Varanasi, Patna, Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, and Cuttack.

It also connects refineries located in Barauni, Haldia, and Paradip. The JHBDPL has a transmission capacity of 16 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.