CNG retail licences: PNGRB drops 7 out of 11 cities

New Delhi, June 15: Citing stakeholders’ feedback, oil regulator PNGRB has dropped seven out of the 11 cities it had identified for the bidding of licences to retail CNG.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) cited “comments/views from various stakeholders” as the reason for dropping Chennai, Bhuaneswar in Odisha, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Coimbatore and Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Guwahati in Assam from the bidding round.

After this, only Jaipur and Udaipur in Rajasthan, Solapur in Maharashtra, Davanagari in Karnataka and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh remain in bid round, PNGRB said in a public notice.

PNGRB had in April identified the 11 cities for giving out city gas distribution licences from among the 20 cities named for the $7.5-billion smart city makeover.

Soon after the government picked 20 cities to provide with uninterrupted power and water supplies, proper sanitation and public transport to turn them into smart cities with living standards comparable to Europe, the regulator decided to give out licence to retail CNG and piped cooking gas in 11 of cities that did not have them as yet.

But the problem was most of them were not connected with any of the gas pipelines and so the fuel could not be taken to them for sale to automobiles and households.