Pipeline economics
The demand for natural gas in India is estimated at 150 MMSCMD and current production in India is only 100 MMSCMD. For the sake of comparison, 1 MMSCMD of natural gas is equivalent to 832 metric tonnes of liquid petroleum products per day and would annually replace about three lakhs tonnes of expensive imported petroleum products.
In India, significant gas reserves have been discovered in last few years but the demand estimates show that there will be a major shortfall in meeting the growing natural gas demand. It is certain that in order to sustain the high growth path, India will have to import large quantities of natural gas?either through pipelines or as liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Two major LNG import facilities have already been commissioned in Gujarat?one at Dahej by Petronet and another at Hazira by Shell. Similar import facilities are likely to come up at many other locations in the country and the average cost for one LNG import facility of five million tonnes per year would be of the order of Rs 3000 crore. In the LNG route, natural gas is sent by ships in liquid form at very low temperature (-160 degrees C). Put simply, gas is changed into liquid form near its source, shipped to market in refrigerated tankers, warmed back into gaseous form on foreign shores and injected into the local pipeline system. Thanks to this technological advance, gas now has the potential to be a tradable, global commodity like oil. This entire process requires large investment in ships and unloading facilities and per unit cost of transportation remains high. But soaring demand for gas has unleashed rapid innovation and investment that is driving down the investments for LNG projects. Tanker ships are getting bigger and more affordable. One-off project planning is giving way to economies of scale.
Some countries like Japan depend only on the expansive LNG route to import gas as the possibility of land pipeline is not available. Japan has 23 facilities to import LNG which is almost eight times the number of LNG import facilities by any other country.
Still the fact remains that the cost of transporting gas through land pipeline is about half that for the LNG systems, which is the main reason for the Indian interest in the Iran pipeline. The low per unit transport cost for pipeline system leaves enough margins for everybody concerned, including the producers. Iran is already demanding price parity for the piped gas with LNG systems.
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