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The Centre on Monday informed the Parliament that it is actively considering using Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) as a transportation fuel in major transportation sectors.

The Union minister for petroleum and natural gas – Dharmendra Pradhan , responding to a question in Lok Sabha , said that “be it the mining sector or railway sector, the government is very much considering this proposal. This is a very new, cost-effective and clean proposal”.

LNG is being imported under open general license on terms and conditions mutually agreed upon between buyers and sellers and it is being traded in the country on market-based mechanism.

To a query, he said that at present, there is no pipeline in the country to transport LNG in liquid form from LNG terminal to end user directly.

“The LNG after re-gasification is being transported in the gaseous state through trunk gas pipelines from terminals to end consumers of such pipeline,” the minister said.

About the expansion plan, Pradhan said that in the eastern part of India, government is spending more than Rs 15,000 crore in laying of pipelines. “Apart from that, in the eastern coast, one LNG Terminal has already started its work at Dhamra in Odisha. Another LNG Terminal is coming up at Ennore in Chennai. For the first time, beyond the western and northern parts of India, southern and eastern parts of India are going to be connected with a huge gas grid”.

Pradhan asserted that this was a priority of the government.

Responding to a query on the usage of biomethane, Pradhan said that ministries of new and renewable energy, petroleum and natural gas and drinking water and sanitation were working in a collective manner in this area.

“The finance minister announced in this budget an ambitious project called Gobar Dhan, which relates to converting the entire cattle dung waste to biomethane and biogas. There are technologies available and cattle dung can be converted into pure CNG,” he added.

