He added that the company plans to borrow Rs 5,000 crore this year for funding its capex plan
New Delhi: State-owned natural gas utility GAIL (India) is planning to invest Rs 55,000 crore over the next few years to lay additional gas pipelines, expand its City Gas Distribution (CGD) network and petrochemical portfolio, Chairman and Managing Director B C Tripathi said today.
“GAIL has lined up capex plans of Rs 55,000 crore of which Rs 32,000 crore are for the transmission pipelines, Rs 12,000 crore is for City Gas Distribution projects, Rs 10,000 crore for a petrochemical plants,” Tripathi said.
He added that the company plans to borrow Rs 5,000 crore this year for funding its capex plan and has chalked out plans to spend around Rs 7,000 crore in the current financial year as compared to Rs 8,344 crore spent last fiscal (2018-19).
Tripathi, while responding to a question on a tie-up between GAIL and ExxonMobil said: “As far as ExxonMobil is concerned, the Memorandum of Understanding is around application of gas, especially natural gas in transportation, bunkering and other innovative technologies around use of gas.”
He added that the company is trying to expanding its renewable energy portfolio and bid for debt-laden IL&FS’ wind power assets.
GAIL had in April this year offered to pay Rs 4,800 crore as enterprise valuation for the 874 Mw wind energy portfolio subject to Orix agreeing to the sale. Orix, however, has now decided to buy out the remaining 51 per cent stake by matching GAIL’s offer.
Asked whether GAIL will raise its offer to win IL&FS’ wind assets, Tripathi said: “We are neither out of the race nor have we increased the offer, it is still in progress.”
He also said GAIL along with Joint Venture firms is operating in 61 Geographical Areas and has won additional 23 GAs in the last CGD bidding round, adding that the company is planning to set-up 450 CNG stations in the current fiscal year.
Tripathi also informed the company is planning to lay an overall 6,500 Km of natural gas pipelines by 2022.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
