Plans redrawn to end city gas distributors’ monopoly

New Delhi: The downstream regulator is planning to end marketing monopoly of Indraprastha GasNSE -3.08 %, Mahanagar GasNSE -1.86 %, Gail Gas, Gujarat GasNSE -2.22 % and more city gas distributors in at least 30 license areas by declaring their network as ‘common carrier’, which would force them to reserve a part of their capacity for third party, people familiar with the matter said.

In the next few months, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) will likely be ready with a regulatory framework for elimination of monopolies, they said.

“If you look around, every monopoly or oligopoly has certain checks – in the power sector, there is regulatory oversight on tariff while in the telecom sector, limited competition keeps tariff in check – but in city gas, the monopoly is unfettered,” a person familiar with the thinking at PNGRB said.