City gas distribution (CGD) operators seem to always have a trick up their sleeve when it comes to cornering lucrative geographical areas. While in the previous bidding rounds, firms went to the extent of not charging anything as network tariffs from customers, in the just-concluded ninth and tenth CGD rounds, some bidders offered to provide piped natural gas (PNG) to households far in excess of the actual ones in a geographical area (GA), in their over enthusiasm to bag profitable GAs.
For instance, Torrent Gas during the ninth round of CGD licensing offered to provide 33,00,000 PNG connections in the Chennai and Tiruvallur districts in Tamil Nadu by 2029 and won the bid. As per the Census of 2011, there were only 21,01,931 households in this GA. Similarly, Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Company of Manila (AG&P), which bagged the state’s Kanchipuram GA, offered to provide 11,51,111 PNG connections in the area which had only 10,06,245 households in 2011.
According to a source, “There are around 5-7 GAs auctioned out in the latest two rounds, in which companies have offered to provide more number of PNG connections than households counted in Census 2011.”
