Get GAIL gas before pipelines are laid

Apartments not having pipelines offered this temporary facility

Two months after it commenced supply of Piped Natural Gas (PNG) to about 800 houses in three city areas, gas marketing firm GAIL Gas Limited has offered apartment complexes across Bengaluru a quicker way to get the cooking fuel: Cascade-based supply till the gas pipeline network reaches their area.

Simply put, mobile cascades mounted on a Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) will take the gas to a filling point within a complex. Packed in a stationary cascade - a series of interconnected cylinders - the gas will then get into a decompression unit before being supplied by internal pipelines to individual apartments. Till date, GAIL has laid pipelines for 6,189 domestic connections and started supplying the gas to 767 houses. Of these, 568 are in BEL Colony, 178 in HSR Layout and 28 in Jindal Colony, GAIL’s General Manager (Projects) Partha Jana told DH. The objective is to complete 1.32 lakh domestic connections over the next five years.

To minimise road-digging, the company has adopted the Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) method, where the pipes are drilled below the road surface. However, as Jana put it, this has not worked always due to topographical issues and multiplicity of underground utility lines in some areas. This is another factor that prompted GAIL to make the cascade delivery offer.

Property developers have evinced interest since the facility created to house the decompression units in existing apartment complexes could later be modified for the pipelines. Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association of India (CREDAI, Bengaluru) secretary S Suresh Hari said the internal pipeline and other changes required in the building architecture could be incorporated in future projects.

PNG pipelines could be embedded into the buildings if the cascade-based supply is guaranteed. “Fixing the pipes later for individual apartments would be a major problem.

Once the storage area created for the GAIL cascades is ready, alterations would be minimised when the pipelines reach the area,” Hari explained.Authorised to implement the City Gas Distribution Network in Bengaluru Urban and Rural districts, GAIL Gas network will eventually cover a total area of 4,395 sq km in Bengaluru East, North and South, Nelamangala, Doddaballapur, Devanahalli, Hosakote and Anekal.