In an effort to bring down the cost of gas by looking at a cheaper alternate India has stepped up its efforts to generate this valuable resource from gas hydrates. PSU major GAIL has taken the lead in the National Gas Hydrate Programme (NGHP) under the ministry of petroleum and natural gas. The PSU also plans to set up an R&D centre in the area of gas hydrate transportation with an initial investment of Rs 2 crore.Gas hydrates are ice-like crystalline compounds which have natural gas trapped in them. As per the reports of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), the total prognosicated gas resource from the gas hydrate in the country is about 1,894 trillion cubic meter (TCM) which is a couple of thousand times more than that of the proven conventional gas resource of less than 1 TCM. Bulk of these hydrates are present in the deep sea shore near Goa, Andaman Islands and Krishna-Godavari basin. Hydrates are easier to transport than LNG and do not require special cryogenic ships for this purpose.Further, at zero temperature they can be transported and this brings down the capital cost in hydrate transportation mode by almost 25 per cent as compared to LNG chains. It is also cheaper than deep offshore drilling for gas.Under the NGHP, while the east coast is being looked after by ONGC, the west coast is under GAIL. The NGHP, which has a corpus of Rs 15 crore, is funded from the OIDB funds.Talking to The Indian Express, chairman and managing director of GAIL Proshanto Banerjee said, “In India we are striving for a cheaper source of gas to meet the expectations of our customers. This is an initiative towards that,” he added. GAIL has also joined the consortium of Mallik Gas Hydrate Research Project which consists of Japan National Oil Company, Geological Survey of Canada, GeoForschungsZentrum Postdam Germany and US Geological Survey. The project is the first of its kind and is now looking into commercialisation of the production technology which is expected to be completed by December 2005.Banerjee said that the R&D centre being set up by GAIL would look into the least cost methods for taking out the hydrates and taking it to the landpoint.
