Industrial clusters located off the gas grid in parts of Gujarat, Western Madhya Pradesh and Northern Maharashtra are increasingly turning to clean fuel, thanks to the truck transport of the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). Indian arm of the Shell Plc—Shell Energy India—has started rolling out small-scale LNG supplies through its truck-loading facility from Hazira LNG terminal in South Gujarat. This, according to officials, has helped industries in the off-grid locations to adopt cleaner energy fuels and reduce emissions.
Launched in January 2021, the truck-loading facility is not new to India but was first for Shell’s Hazira facility which is surrounded by industrial clusters along the coast of Gujarat and also in the hinterland of Western Madhya Pradesh and parts of Maharashtra. There are quite a few in the 300 kms area. This include Ankleshwar-Bharuch chemicals, fertilisers and pharmaceutical cluster; textiles and engineering cluster near Surat and heavy engineering and equipment cluster at Vadodara.
Currently, Shell despatches the trucks with LNG in cryogenic tankers to the remote areas within the radius of 300-500 kilometres from the Hazira facility, which is equipped with 5-million tonnes per annum LNG import terminal. The LNG terminal is connected to all the three major national gas pipelines effectively pushing gas to almost everywhere in the country.
Speaking to businessline, Rahul Singh, VP India, Integrated Gas & RES, underlined a growing adoption by small players. He also highlighted that the smaller industrial customers that were off the grid were disconnected from access to LNG. They were not able to have access to LNG for their decarbonisation needs.