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Delhi seeks gas from Centre

Staff Reporter

`Tie-ups to make available 12,000 MW of power in next 5 years'

NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said on Monday that her Government had been assiduously pursuing the allocation of compressed natural gas and liquid natural gas with the Union Ministry of Petroleum to generate 2,200 MW of power within its area and hoped that the necessary fuel purchase agreement would be finalised in the next month or two.

Speaking at the Power Conference 2007 here, Ms. Dikshit explained: "With Delhi hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010, the city will need additional power. In all we have tied up arrangements for 12,000 MW of power for Delhi over the next five years."

With States owning mineral resources demanding their share of free power or variable cost power as an incentive, she also advocated the need for augmenting power generation through a higher incentive by way of royalty to be revised regularly depending on the prevailing price of minerals.

Stating that Delhi has no resources of coal, gas, wind power or hydel power, the Chief Minister stressed the need to look at regional development of vital infrastructure like power, water and roads rather than focusing on State-confined solutions.

She said there was a need to rethink the policy as a vital infrastructure like power can be augmented in the fastest possible way by promoting more public-private partnership models in all aspects of distribution, generation and transmission. "This is already beginning to happen in many States but the process is slow and time-consuming," she said.

Even in Delhi, she added, it took three-and-a-half years to carry out the reforms but still there was much finger-pointing at the process, even though every institution which could look into it has examined it and found the process to be thorough and professionally driven.

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