Shri Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State for Petroleum & Natural Gas, has said that the oil industry is examining the feasibility of converting natural gas to liquid products like petrol and diesel. The Government is in discussion with South Africa who have the latest technology in this field. Shri Gangwar said this while inaugurating the City Gas Feeder Pipeline at Agartala, yesterday. The newly inaugurated GAIL’s Agartala City Gas Feeder Pipeline will facilitate supply of gas to Tripura Natural Gas Company Limited for its onward distribution to domestic, commercial and small scale industrial sector. Shri Gangwar further said since Tripura is surplus in natural gas the use of conversion technology there in a cost-effective manner would benefit the consumers in a very big way and the requirements of petroleum products of the state can be met locally.

The exploration work in Tripura started in the year 1972 and natural gas was first struck in 1975. The present production potential of natural gas in Tripura is over 40 lakh cubic metres per day while the utilisation is of only about 12 lakh cubic metres per day. It may be pointed out that the Government has constituted a High Level Monitoring Committee on "Production and Utilisation of Natural Gas in Tripura" of which, Shri Gangwar is the Chairman

With the inauguration of this pipeline GAIL will supply 65,000 Standard Cubic Metres of gas per day to the Tripura Natural Gas Company Limited for distribution to the households in Agartala, and nearby areas. The company has already undertaken development of necessary pipeline infrastructure for distribution of gas to the domestic, commercial and small scale industrial consumers. GAIL has developed pipeline network of around 60 km in the State of Tripura and the company is distributing about 12 lakh Standard Cubic Metres of gas per day to different consumers in power sector for generation of about 170 MW of power per day.