Dabhol starts drawing Reliance gas

The Dabhol power plant started buying natural gas on Wednesday from Reliance Industries to cut electricity generation cost at the country's largest gas-fired unit.

"We started drawing KG-D6 gas from Wednesday. The volumes were around 4.5 million standard cubic meters per day," said A K Ahuja, managing director of Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd, the company that runs the 2,150 MW power plant and adjoining LNG receipt facility in Maharasthra.

The government had this month more than doubled RGPPL's allocation from KG-D6 to 5.67 million standard cubic meters per day that will help generate about 1,000 MW of electricity.

"We are currently operating three gas turbines producing 920-930 megawatt of electricity. We will add another 320 MW turbine by November-end, when the drawal would increase to 5.6 mmscmd," he said.

RGPPL was initially allocated 2.7 mmscmd of gas for the period between April and September but the company had not drawn even a single unit as it had a running contract with Petronet LNG Ltd to buy imported liquefied natural gas.

It paid a burner-tip price of $7.8 per million British thermal unit for the regassified-LNG sourced from Petronet.

"The delivered price of KG-D6 gas would be $6.2 per mmBtu," Ahuja said adding the cost of electricity generation will come down to about Rs 4 per unit from Rs 4.70 earlier.

Image: A RIL plant