GAIL is looking to commission a Green Hydrogen electrolyser plant with a capacity of 4.3 tonnes per day, at its Vijaypur facility in the current calendar year. While GAIL is blending Hydrogen with natural gas on an experimental basis in Indore in its CGD (city gas distribution) network to test its success, it aims to escalate blending ratios with due permission based on the test results. Currently, permission for only 5 percent blending of Hydrogen with natural gas has been accorded, with GAIL conducting joint studies with EIL (Engineers India Limited) and IIT Kanpur to further blend Hydrogen with natural gas.

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Commenting on the losses from the previous quarter, GAIL's CMD Sandeep Kumar Gupta told CNBC TV18 that the quarterly results were impacted due to high prices and disruption in long term supply contracts, as no vertical was spared from transmission for natural gas & LPG to marketing to petrochemicals. However, he hopes that the price softness and growth in natural gas consumption in India will continue with the softening of natural gas prices & the availability of gas stocks at a comfortable level in Europe.

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GAIL's petrochemical plant's planned shutdown for a month had extended for one more month due to a bad pricing situation, with the plant operating at 50 percent capacity for a good part of the previous financial year. Despite the plant running at its full capacity since March 2023, Gupta stated that petrochemical prices haven't recovered despite softening of natural gas prices, though he hopes that petrochemical prices will resume to their normal levels and GAIL will be able to operate its plants on a sustained basis at full capacity.

Pointing to a shortfall of 30 cargoes which Gazprom didn't supply citing force majeure, he added that for May and June Gazprom has given full quantities of 4 cargoes per month while he hopes for the trend to continue to help the supply situation in India.

Terming the softening of prices as a great help to the natural gas sector & CGD companies, he described the lowering of PNG and CNG prices from their previous highs as beneficial to expansion of the business scenario.

From April 1, 2023, PNGRB had notified unified tariffs which Gupta terms as helpful for distant customers as now there are 3 slabs of rates based on unification of tariffs across entities, which he feels doesn't lead to any profit or loss for any individual entity, gas entity or transporting entity per se. With a tariff revision for GAIL, he hopes that the company will add Rs. 1400 crores to Rs. 1500 crores in EBITDA for the next fiscal and envisages a volume growth potential of 7 percent to 8 percent in fertiliser plants, with natural gas consumption coming back to normal.

Also Read: GAIL Q4 Results: Profit slumps 78% on-year on higher expenses; stock cracks 5%