President commissions first unit of ONGC Tripura plant

Agartala: When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the 726.6-MW gas-based ONGC Tripura Power Company at Palatana in Tripura in 2005 – barely kilometres away from the Bangladesh border – not many, even in ONGC boardroom, were convinced if the project would take off.

Never before had power equipment weighing up to 280 tonne been brought to this land-locked State, which suffers from poor connectivity. All the power projects commissioned here so far were only of 10-30 MW capacity each.

About eight years later, President Pranab Mukherjee dedicated to the nation the first 363.3 MW unit on Friday. He was all praise for the role of Bangladesh in making this happen.

“India has many power generation utilities. Many more are coming up. But this one is special. Because if Bangladesh had not extended exemplary co-operation in allowing transit of the heavy equipment through their territories, OTPC would have never been a reality,” Mukherjee said in the presence of Bangladeshi diplomats in India.

He stressed on extending the scope of such initiatives for mutual benefit.

“We are trying to set up a common grid (through West Bengal border) to supply power (to Dhaka). NTPC is also setting up a thermal power station in Bangladesh,” the President said.

Fillip to North-East

Gas was discovered in Tripura as early as in 1974. The state-owned ONGC had established production potential to the tune of 5 million standard cubic metres or more.

According to the State Chief Minister, Manik Sarkar, two more E&P companies, engaged in exploration in Tripura, recently reported encouraging results. But in the absence of consumption base, exploration and production activities never gained pace in the State until the late Subir Raha, then ONGC chairman, responded positively to a proposal from the State Government to set up a power generation utility.

For ONGC, this opened the prospect to monetise the gas and step up exploration in the State.

For Tripura and the entire North Eastern region, this was the single largest investment. “From power-starved we are now power surplus. The changed status evinced interest among business,” said Manik Sarkar.

The ONGC company recently agreed to set up a 1.3 million tonne a year fertiliser plant jointly with Chambal Fertiliser and the Tripura Government to monetise its fresh gas discovery at Khubal.

This means that Tripura will witness Rs 5,000 crore of investment in the next three years. This is over and above an approximately Rs 10,000 crore investment in the last couple of years involving the power project.