AGARTALA / KAILASHAHAR, May 11 (TIWN): With 800 acres of land allotted to set up a Rs. 5000-crore Urea fertiliser plant at Khobal in Unakoti district of Tripura, the plant would be delayed for another one year from now as ONGC would have to assure the supply of gas only after getting sufficient amount of gas at least for 20 years, said ONGC official to TIWN over phone on Sunday."The project is in the initial stage. we have also to establish that the required amount of gas would be made available by us because the project is gas based. So, I think it would take about another year to be operational," official said.He also said that ONGC had expedited its exploration drive to gather more gas for supply to different projects. State-owned ONGC has signed MoU with a Rajasthan-based private company to set up a gas-based fertilizer plant in Tripura to meet the growing shortage of urea in the eastern and north-eastern states and adjoining Bangladesh.The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), in association with Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited (CFCL) and the Tripura government, will set up the Rs.5,000 crore plant in northern Tripura.

 “We expect by 2016 the fertilizer plant would start producing urea and three million cubic metres of gas would be required per day for the project,” official said, adding that the plant would annually produce 1.3 million tonnes of fertilizer. He further said, “The Tripura government would share the 10 percent of the equity while the remaining 90 percent would be borned equally by CFCL and ONGC.”

However, the State government has allotted 800 acre land in Kailashahar in Unkoti district for the plant. The supply of gas to the plant site would be made available from newly discovered Khubal well in the area. However experts are yet to find out a regular source to bring in water to the plant site.

Besides, the then ONGC Asset Manager V P Mahawar recently said, the Tripura unit of ONGC had struck gas in four wells in Trishna area of South Tripura district but about a decade ago the area was declared as a part of Trishna wildlife sanctuary as a result of which gas could not be lifted from those wells.

"We are in touch with the state and central government so that our drilling area is excluded from the sanctuary area and we could explore gas", Mahawar said.

He said ONGC has drilled as many as 176 wells in 11 stretches of the state and of which 82 have been producing gas since 1972. The highest rate of success in exploration has convinced the authorities to make commitment to supply 36 lakh cubic meters of gas to 726-MW Palatana power project for 20 years and five lakh cubic metres to Monarchak power plant.
In regard of the Chambal fertilizer plant Mahawar earlier said, "We are exploring the possibility of more gas field in North Tripura before making commitment.” ONGC made it clear to Tripura government that the state does not have any dearth of pipeline gas supply for kitchen and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for motor vehicles, he added.