1.95 lakh flyers hit as hackers break into AI loyalty scheme
Nearly two lakh Air India frequent flyers will lose out on benefits after the national carrier was forced to suspend its passenger loyalty rewards programme, which was hacked into a few weeks ago. A probe by the Delhi Police revealed that hackers accessed the Air India website to steal points worth Rs 16 lakh on air travel miles accumulated by a total of 1.95 lakh flyers by creating fake frequent flyer accounts. The hackers have accessed user IDs and passwords of some of the website administrators to verify such fake accounts and claimed frequent flyer rewards. The anomaly was first noticed on June 8, when an Air India staffer verifying documents of a frequent flyer account holder noticed the account had already been verified. The document submitted towards identity proof was a driving licence, which is not on the Air India list of accepted proof. “Air India only accepts passports, PAN cards, voter IDs and Aadhaar Cards as proof from fliers,” an airline official said. “Further verification revealed that the account was fake, and internal probe showed up 23 such fake accounts,” the official said. Senior Air India officials who were questioned by the Delhi Police said that the rewards programme called Flying Returns had 1.95 lakh frequent flyer accounts, but it was not yet known as to how many passengers were actually affected. An airline staffer said that data from at least 20 genuine accounts could have been stolen. Several account holders, such as Nepean Sea Road resident Manish Kedia, said they only know that the rewards programme had been suspended. “I’m not quite sure what’s going on,” Kedia said. “There hasn’t been any clarity on whether the points we have accumulated will be remitted to the account, and when will be able to claim the benefits,” he added. Troy Apke Jersey
Panel begins work on preparing blueprint for refinery exports
An expert panel has begun work on drafting blueprint for raising India’s oil refining capacity by 2040 with a view not just meeting demands of the fast expanding economy but also to capture export market. The 12-member Working Group for preparing Approach Paper for enhancing refining capacity by 2040 held it first meeting on June 27, officials said. The panel began work by asking public and private sector refiners to present their plans for capacity expansion and asked for domestic demand assessments to be made. The panel headed by Additional Secretary in the Oil Ministry and include directors of refineries at Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL). It would also comprise of representatives of private sector Reliance Industries and Essar Oil besides managing directors of Numaligarh Refineries Ltd, Mangalore Refineries Ltd and Chennai Petroleum Corp Ltd (CPCL), officials said. India has a refining capacity of 232.066 million tons, which exceeded the demand of 183.5 MT in the 2015-16 fiscal. According to International Energy Agency (EA), this demand is forecast to reach 458 MT by 2040. Considering a modest fuel demand growth of 4 per cent, the present capacity will be insufficient in next few years. “India is one of the fastest developing countries in the world and simultaneously, the world energy demand is expected to double in the next 30 years with energy portfolio undergoing a transition to one that includes a wide range of sources,” said an oil ministry order constituting the Group. Officials said expansions underway will raise the refining capacity to about 260 MT by 2018. The rise in projected demand, the order said, paves the way for gradual shift towards renewable and cleaner fuels richer in hydrogen or to neat hydrogen. “It has been envisioned that the energy mix in 2040 could be entirely different from what it is today. Also, new capacities in petroleum refining will depend upon aggregation of demand from different petroleum derived products, which itself depends upon substitution by other forms of energy and government policies,” it said. It was felt that an approach paper for refinery capacity expansion of PSU refineries by the year 2040 needs to be prepared for meeting the growing demand of petroleum products in the country, the order said. Officials said the Working Group in three months would assess primary energy requirement for 2040 as also likely technological developments in different energy fields. It would then develop primary energy mix with breakup in terms of gas, oil, coal, nuclear, solar, hydro and biofuel. India has leapfrogged from a modest 62 million tons per annum refining capacity in 1998 to 232 MT at the end of March 31, 2016. Linval Joseph Authentic Jersey
OIL offers to do its bit for island village
Public sector oil company Oil India Limited (OIL) has come forward to develop the island village Lanka of Thane Lanka in Mummidivaram mandal of East Godavari district with an expected outlay of Rs. 15.50 million and handed over Rs. 5 million to the district administration towards the first instalment. Lanka of Thane Lanka has one of the eight gas wells allocated to OIL in East Godavari district and the engineers found the site suitable for high pressure and high temperature (HTHT) rigging. The OIL commenced the natural gas exploration works at the well in November last with the support from the local residents. Now, as part of fulfilling its corporate social responsibility, the OIL decided to contribute its mite for the development of the village and the surrounding areas. Deputy General Manager of the firm B. Prasantha handed over the cheque for Rs. 5 million to Collector H. Arun Kumar here. Accompanied by the CSR in-charge Ramakrishna, Prasantha called on Mr. Arun Kumar in the latter’s chambers and explained in detail the natural gas exploration operations by the OIL in the district. Lauding the firm’s initiative, Arun Kumar called upon the corporate companies to join hands with the district administration for the overall development of the district. Corey Seager Womens Jersey
GAIL begins gas supplies to Chinese wheel producer
GAIL India Ltd, the nation’s biggest natural gas transporter, has begun supplying gas to the India unit of the world’s largest automotive Aluminium wheel producer Wanfeng Group. Gas supplies to Wanfeng Aluminium Wheels (India) Pvt Ltd’s plant at Rewari in Haryana commenced on June 27, company sources said. The Rewari plant is the first overseas manufacturing facility of the Chinese company. Wanfeng invest about USD 50 million in the plant which will have an annual prod… Wanfeng invest about USD 50 million in the plant which will have an annual production capacity of 3 million motorcycle wheels. The plant which became operational last year will also produce other auto wheels. The Chinese Group produces 12 million automotive wheels a year and 18 million motorcycle wheels. Sources said gas supplies to the plant Rewari plant of the company was provided as part of government’s programme to push for manufacturing in the country through the ‘Make-in- India’ initiative. GAIL is supplying gas to the unit through Sultanpur-Neemrana gas pipeline. It will supply 25,500 standard cubic meters per day of gas for five years. The gas being supplied to Wanfeng is imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), sources said. The Rewari plant will manufacture alloy wheels for companies like Maruti Suzuki, Hero Moto Corp and Honda Motorcycle and Honda Car. Globally, Wanfeng’s main clients include General Motors, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, PSA, Fiat, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai Kia Automotive Group Erik Haula Womens Jersey
Govt decides to extend budgetary grants to Gail, GSPC
The government has decided to extend budgetary grants to Gail India Ltd and Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. (GSPC) to meet any shortfall in the cost of their pipeline projects, in a bid to speed up doubling the country’s gas transportation network over the next few years from 15,000km now. The agreement between the oil ministry and the finance ministry to help pipeline projects reach financial closure, along with the planned revival of three fertilizer factories that will buy natural gas from Gail, will aid the expansion of the country’s gas highway which has made little progress in the last two years, said a government official who is involved in the discussions. Problems relating to project viability, absence of anchor customers for natural gas along the pipeline and political opposition from southern states—Tamil Nadu and Kerala—had delayed India’s ambitious plan to expand the pipeline network. That situation is changing now. “Reviving the state-owned fertilizer factories at Sindri in Jharkhand, Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh and Barauni in Bihar will provide anchor gas customers to the Phulpur (Allahabad)-Haldia pipeline project of Gail. The finance ministry has agreed to provide budgetary support to bridge the shortfall in covering the project cost of this and other pipeline projects,” said the official quoted above, asking not to be identified. This project is divided into different phases and, once completed, will transport 16 million metric standard cubic metres of gas per day along a 1700km route, supplying fuel to industrial units and facilitating city gas distribution. State-owned NTPC Ltd and Coal India Ltd announced setting up of a joint venture on 17 May to build new gas-based fertilizer units in the premises of Fertilizer Corp. of India’s (FCIL) Sindri and Gorakhpur units and Hindustan Fertilizer Corp. Ltd’s Barauni unit, which will help these ailing companies. Indian Oil Corp. is in the process of joining the project. The ministries initially considered supporting the pipeline projects with viability gap funding, a scheme to provide capital support to infrastructure projects built through public-private partnerships, but instead decided to give direct budgetary support because finding a private partner will be time consuming, the official said. Grant from the government could be up to 35% or 40% of the project cost as per the requirement, said the official. An email sent to Gail on Wednesday remained unanswered. A gas transportation network across the country is essential for enabling many fertilizer units to replace naphtha (a liquid hydrocarbon) with more efficient gas as feedstock and many power plants to move from diesel to the less polluting gas. Shifting to a gas-based economy is part of India’s climate change plan. Part of the land acquisition problem for Gail in the south for its 884km Kochi-Koottanad-Bengaluru-Mangalore pipeline looks set to be solved with the new Left Democratic Front chief minister in Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, promising land use rights for projects of economic importance, including gas pipelines. Vijayan told Mint in an interview on 21 June that the state has limited land available and when people give it up for infrastructure projects, they have to be sufficiently compensated. Gail only acquires the right to use land and returns it to the owner after laying underground pipelines. The owner gets a percentage of the market value of the land as compensation. A host of small industries along the pipeline’s route in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are expected to get clean fuel once the project is completed. Tamil Nadu still opposes about 300km of the pipeline which passes through the state. Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in an interview to Mint on 15 March that new terminals are being built at Ennore in Tamil Nadu, Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh and Dhamra in Odisha to re-gasify imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) which will boost availability of the clean fuel. The other gas transportation network being built will connect Ranchi to Paradip, Paradip to Surat and Mallavaram to Bhilwada. India produced 32 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas and imported 21 bcm in 2015-16. Jake McGee Jersey
With black-marketing curbs, LPG imports see 30% jump
India’s LPG imports grew by a whopping 29.5% in May 2016 against the same month the previous year. The LPG imports in May this year stood at 35.6 thousand metric ton (tmt) against 27.5 tmt in May 2015. India’s LPG imports grew by a whopping 29.5% in May 2016 against the same month the previous year. The LPG imports in May this year stood at 35.6 thousand metric ton (tmt) against 27.5 tmt in May 2015. The total consumption of LPG has risen by 7.4% in May this year at 1607.5 tmt compared to 1496.6 tmt in the same month previous year. The buyers in the non-domestic or commercial category consumed 130 tmt of cooking fuel in May this year, a rise of 21.5% against 107 tmt in the same month previous year. This indicated that with the diversion of subsidised domestic LPG to them being curbed, commercial category consumers have come clean on their consumption. Similarly, the bulk consumption of LPG went up by 22% at 31.5 tmt in May 2016 against 25.8 tmt in May 2015. The only consumers who saw a 4.8% decline in LPG consumption is automobiles. A non-domestic 19.2-kg LPG refill costs R979 in New Delhi. The siphoning-off of cheaper and subsidised cooking gas meant for households towards commercial usage has stopped after the government launched a scheme — PAHAL — for direct transfer of LPG subsidy to consumers all over the country from January 1, 2015. Under this scheme, LPG is being sold to consumers at the market rate while the subsidy is directly credited to their bank accounts. Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan, while talking about two years of the BJP government in power, had said more than Rs. 210 billion of subsidy has been saved by implementing PAHAL. In addition to stopping black marketing of cheap LPG, 33.4 million duplicate, inactive, ghost accounts were detected and blocked. The consumption saw a rise of modest 5.7% in the biggest consuming category of LPG — domestic. The users in this category consumed 1396.5 tmt of LPG in May 2016 against 1321.7 tmt in May 2015. Currently, a domestic subsidised 14.2-kg LPG refill costs R419.18 in New Delhi and the government offers a cash discount of another R129.32 on each refill. More than 15 million consumers have opted to buy cooking fuel at market rates and do not enjoy any subsidy. A non-subsidied domestic LPG refill costs R548.50 in the Capital. During 2014-16, 36.6 million new LPG connections, including 6.5 million connections to BPL households, were provided – the highest ever in the history of India. Pradhan targets to provide 100 million new LPG connections in the next three years, out of which, 50 million connections are for BPL households under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY). To meet the growing demand of LPG, 10,000 new distributorships will be commissioned, primarily in rural areas, said the petroleum minister, adding that LPG coverage would increase significantly from the current level of 61%. Currently, India produces about 11 million ton or about 60% is produced indigenously, while remaining 40% are imported. Tim Schaller Womens Jersey