OREANDA-NEWS. The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply today that the Government has approved the proposal for pooling of domestic gas with imported Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) to supply gas at a uniform delivered cost to all the grid connected fertilizer plants for production of urea.

Domestic gas and imported RLNG will continue to be supplied to fertilizer units as per their existing contracts and additional volumes will be sourced from imported RLNG. The quantity of supply of domestic and imported RLNG may vary depending upon demand of individual fertilizer units and availability from upstream sources.

It is estimated that the pooling proposal will lead to additional production of around 37.13 lakh MT of urea in existing fertilizer units over the next four years (2015-16 to 2018-19). This is expected to result in saving of Rs.1550 crore of subsidy due to reduction in import.

The pooling mechanism shall become effective after notification of Guidelines for Pooling of Gas for Fertilizer (Urea) sector in the Official Gazette.