India's Gail to Allow Third Party Access to its Pipelines

India’s biggest gas transportation and marketing firm Gail August 27 launched a web portal for enabling booking of common carrier capacity for natural gas transmission services under its pipelines. The state-owned company has more than 11,400 km of natural gas pipelines operating across various parts of the country.

The portal operates within the regulatory framework and provides gas consumers the facility to register pipeline capacity bookings online and endeavours to continue the practice of serving on first-come-first-serviced basis, Gail said.

"With this online initiative, Gail has raised the standards of consumer experience for third-party access to natural gas pipelines to consumers in India. Gail has been providing third party access to pipelines since 2004 and over 100-150 consumers small and large are routinely being serviced at any time, during the last few years," Gail chairman BC Tripathi said.

Out of the total earmarked common carrier capacity in various Gail's pipelines, around 33% of the capacity was used by third party shippers during the 12-month period that ended March 31, 2018.

The decision to allow third party access to its pipelines comes in response to Indian government’s willingness to split Gail into separate companies. Sources told Times of India earlier this year that the plan is being discussed in the oil ministry as the government is unhappy with Gail’s performance in building a pipeline network in addition to a possible conflict of interest in its role as the infrastructure provider as well as a carrier. Gail was not in favour of splitting the company and assured the government that it will address the conflict on interest issue.