Indraprastha Gas Limited said it opened 72 outlets of compressed natural gas in the national capital region in the last four months and another 18 will be opened this month.
These have been opened at the fuel outlets of Indian Oil, BPCL and HPCL.
“While 51 out of these 72 CNG fuelling facilities are located in NCT of Delhi, 21 are located in NCR towns of Greater Noida and Ghaziabad. IGL, a joint venture of GAIL (India) Ltd. and BPCL along with Govt. of NCT of Delhi is the largest CNG distribution company in the country,” it said.
As per directions of Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, 104 new CNG fuelling stations were to be set up in Delhi and NCR, out of which IGL had been assigned the task of setting up 90 new facilities.
The high levels of pollution in Delhi and a lack of action by the government has caused the courts to take matters into their own hands.
There has been a growth of around 8% in average daily CNG sales since January 2016 with IGL recording peak CNG sale of 27.26 lakh kg per day, the company said.
The augmentation of CNG infrastructure by IGL along with an increase in the number of commercial as well as private vehicles running on CNG has resulted in increase in demand of CNG, the company said.
While all the taxis running in Delhi and NCR have been mandated to run on CNG by Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, there has also been a spurt in conversion of private cars to CNG mode in last few months due to initiatives aimed at curbing pollution in the region.
IGL is currently selling CNG to over 8 lakh CNG driven vehicles, while catering to the largest road based public transport fleet of buses in the world.
IGL has been registering average sale of over 26 lakh kg per day on working days in the last fortnight.
With the recent expansion of IGL’s CNG refuelling infrastructure at a cost of over Rs 250 crore, its installed compression capacity has crossed 70 lakh kg per day, which is enough to dispense over 35 lakh kg per day.
With the objective of incentivizing CNG refueling during non-peak hours, IGL has already introduced differential pricing by offering a discount of Rs 1.50 per kg on the selling price CNG for filling between 12 am to 5 am at its select 230 outlets.
The move is aimed at reducing congestion and also ensuring effective utilisation of its CNG refuelling infrastructure during off peak hours.
At the current level prices in Delhi, CNG offers over 57% savings towards the running cost when compared to petrol driven vehicles. When compared to diesel driven vehicles, the economics in favour of CNG at revised price would be over 28%.