Question : SHORTAGE OF CNG

(a) whether attention of the Government has been drawn to the news -item captioned `CNG shortage disrupts life in the Capital` as reported in the Financial Express dated February 1,2001;

(b) if so, the causes of the CNG pipeline fire in Delhi;

(a) whether adequate safeguards have been installed to prevent fires;

(b) if so, the extent to which the CNG supply has been disrupted due to such accident;

(c) whether any alternative system of CNG supply has been considered; and

(d) if so, the details of plans to prevent recurrence of such accidents?

Minister of State in the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas (Sh.Santosh Kumar Gangwar)

(a) Yes, Sir.

(b) The fire was caused due to the damage on GAIL`s pipeline in R.K.Puram on account of horizontal directional drilling carried out by the contractor of the army authorities at the time of laying optical fibre ducts in the area which accidentally punctured the natural gas pipeline.

(c) Yes, Sir. Round the clock monitoring of natural gas pipeline and line patrolling to check unauthorized digging along pipeline are undertaken. Information on digging activities permitted by various public utilities in the vicinity of higher pressure gas pipeline are required to be provided to GAIL to prevent fire. In case of fire, there are many in-built checks to cut off the supply.

(d) CNG supply was disrupted only marginally for 12 hours after the fire accident..

(e) Supply of CNG can also be through use of mobile cascades

(f) Same as `c` above.