**5. City gas distribution**

Apart from the anchor customers like the power/fertilizer/petrochemical plants, and the refineries, the City Gas Distribution would remain the other most important sector. The government wanted to boost clean fuel adoption in the transport, domestic, and transport sectors, so PNGRB granted 136 authorizations to CGD entities under the 9th and 10th rounds of bidding. This has the potential to cover 53% of the geographical area (GA) of the country and 70% of the population. The number of compressed natural gas (CNG) stations will increase from existing 1838 to over 10,000. In the same way, the number of domestic PNG connections is proposed to be increased from 5.5 million to 40 million. The CGD sector will need investment in the range of Rs. 900–1200 billion by 2030.

The CGD networks growth has taken off only in the last 5–6 years. The historical progress of the award of CGD networks is given in **Table 5**.

In addition to the above, PNGRB has already announced the 11th round of bidding under which an additional 65 geographical areas could get a CGD network. The government and the PNGRB are constantly striving to expand the CGD network in the country. The government offers the necessary push to build up CGD infrastructure across the country. However, the shift from competing fuels to natural gas will take place only when it becomes cost-competitive. Customers are primarily concerned about the economics of natural gas vs. the competing fuels [16, 17], therefore availability of domestic natural gas or imported LNG at a competitive price will improve the adoption of natural gas.


*Role of Natural Gas in India: Recent Developments and Future Perspectives DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101346*

#### **Table 5.**

*CGD network expansion in India.*
