HBJ pipeline may start today

The plant has suffered heavily in the floods — the extent of damage is still was being worked out — but officials said as many as 200 high tension motors were under water.

Prasad said that initially the quantity of gas supplied on Thursday would be less; the quantity would be increased gradually. Incidentally, on Thursday, ONGC officials had estimated that the operations would start only after one week.

Late in the night, an ONGC official claimed one train would start tentatively from Monday morning, allowing the corporation to process and supply 6.3 MMSCM (million metric standard cubic metre). While a major chunk would be supplied to the HBJ pipeline, the rest would go to local consumers like Kribhco.

Incidentally, ONGC could tide over the crisis only because of supply of power by the Gujarat Electricity Board. The total processing capacity of the Hazira plant is 42 MMSCM. Incidentally, the corporation has taken the same amount of time to restart operations as it took during the 1994 flood.

Gujarat Gas Company Limited, which was under seven feet of water on Thursday, has not suspended gas supply at all to domestic and commercial users. However, given the shortage of gas, it has cut down on supplies to its industrial users.

The cut was introduced not because of flooding but because of shortfall in supply from Gas Authority of India Limited, according to GGCL Deputy Manager D R Mehta.

The staff managed operations in the other plant manually, Mehta said, adding that they had even had to deploy a boat within the company premises to shift men and equipment.

GGCL is now supplying gas procured from Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Limited. However, the procurement is only half of its total requirement. “We will be able to start the second plant in 15 minutes, should we start receiving gas supply from GAIL, ” Mehta claimed.

Late in the night, a National Thermal Power Corporation spokesman said the company was shutting down the plant as it could not arrange for the supply of naptha. The corporation has been running only one of the four turbines ever since gas supply from ONGC stopped.