AGARTALA, Nov 27 (TIWN): After months of technical glitch and interruptions, ONGC began the gas supply to 101MW Monarchak plant from Friday. In such irregular and unstable situation of power generation where Monarchak power plant was shut down for months but still Manik Govt is boasting for exporting 100MW power to Bangladesh. It is also to be mention here that TSECL backed by Tripura Govt has to pay huge pending bills over Rs 100 crores to OTPC Palatana but not paying money back to power plants even though consumers paying to TSECL . CM Manik and his CPI-M Govt got the hundreds of crores money for big budget election campaign but don’t (?) have the money to pay the due electricity bills to power generation plants like OTPC Palatana. Although ONGC begins 0.40 mmscmd unit of gas supply to NEEPCO’s 101 MW Monarchak plant from Friday, but there is no assurance how long ONGC will continue gas supply, confirms NEEPCO Project Head S R Biswas to TIWN. Talking to TIWN, NEEPCO Project Head S R Biswas confirmed that ONGC has started supply of 0.40 mmscmd unit of gas to NEEPCO’s 101 MW Monarchak plant after they have assured the gas supply to be taken uninterruptedly”. It was further confirmed with NEEPCO General Manager (Electrical) Samar Ranjan Biswas that Monarchak power plant expects to get 0.40 mmscmd unit of gas from ONGC from Friday evening.NEEPCO wanted 0.5 MSCMPD gas but ONGC is able to supply only 0.2 to 0.3 MSCMPD due to technical problems; there are frequent interruptions also and ONGC will be able to supply 0.5 MSCMPD gas by the middle of 2016.

It is to be mentioned here that if everything goes well Monarchak will be able to generate 50 MW unit of power from Friday. Powered by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), Tripura's 101 MW gas-based Monarchak power plant will begin its power generation on a regular basis from Friday evening.

However, power generation in 101MW Monarchak plant was stopped for month because of inadequate and proper gas supply from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation,” Biswas stated. Unable to get the required supply of gas from ONGC, Monarchak has faced a daily loss of Rs 17 lakhs which monthly stands at around 5 crore for past few months.

Failure on the part of authorities concerned to ensure adequate and regular supply of gas as well as technical glitches have led to an inordinate delay in the commissioning of the state-run NEEPCO's second biggest thermal power project in Northeast India and resulted in huge losses to it.

While a senior official of the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO) blamed the government-owned ONGC's failure to ensure adequate supply of gas for the delay that was causing NEEPCO a loss of Rs 6 crore per month, however an official of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation said technical problems and interruptions on the part of NEEPCO were to blame for the situation.
It is worthy to mention that ONGC is completely ready to supply gas to Monarchak plant for commissioning the unit. If plan goes well, Monarchak will able to start generation in full swing and Tripura will get 50 MW additional powers. With this, Tripura will be a power surplus state, which produces 726 MW from the gas-based thermal power project at Palatana, in Gomati district, about 60 km from here and provide power to all the North Eastern states.

Another 100 MW would be given to Bangladesh from Palatana for which transmission lines were being drawn up by both the countries.

The ONGC, after many negotiations and meetings, decided to supply gas to the power plant from Friday.
The foundation stone of the Monarchak power project was laid during the previous National Democratic Alliance government in March 2002 and the Tripura government allotted the required land to NEEPCO in 2003.