Hyderabad, September 26: Union petroleum minister S Jaipal Reddy on Sunday denied holding back gas allocation made to the state under pressure from Telangana MPs. In a letter to chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, Jaipal Reddy said he had come to know that he (Kiran) was under the impression that he had cancelled the allocation of gas to Andhra Pradesh. But he asserted that the issue of stopping the release of gas had not figured when the Telangana MPs had paid him a visit.
Jaipal Reddy recalled that the chief minister had, on Sept 19, told him about the need for diverting gas to other Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in view of the shutdown of GMR Vemagiri due to a technical snag.
But gas allocated to Vemagiri cannot be diverted to other IPPs, he said, as it would breach the 75 per cent PLF limit set by the Empowered Group of Ministers. It was then conveyed to the to the officers of the state government that regassified liquefied natural gas (RNLG) could be made available through GAIL.
But, he said, the state government had not responded to this offer till date and added it was still up for grabs. He wrote that he had spoken to the chief minister on September 22 on telephone and apprised him of this option.
On Saturday, the chief minister, while addressing a group of Congress workers, had remarked that Telangana MPs had thrown a spanner in the state’s efforts to augment power generation by persuading the petroleum minister not to allocate the gas.
In this context, he had said he directed officials to look elsewhere for gas, thereby implicating that he believed Jaipal Reddy had agreed to the request of the MPs.
–Agencies