India’s major pipeline natural gas efforts appear to face some roadblocks along the way. City Gas Distribution (CGD) companies have currently only managed to add between 8,000 and 10,000 new connections daily, far short of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas’s ambitious target of 100,000 daily connections.Industry executives said the rollout was slowing due to a severe shortage of trained manpower, especially certified gas plumbers, coupled with poor consumer uptake in many areas. “The government’s urgency is understandable, but the ecosystem is not ready,” a senior CGD executive told ET.
Industry participants said the required workforce simply does not exist in the size required for such an aggressive expansion drive.
The problem has worsened in major centers including the National Capital Region, Mumbai and Ahmedabad, where many plumbers have returned to their hometowns amid election-related unrest.“There are no certified gas plumbers. The target is not achievable in the current scenario,” another executive said.To fill this gap, CGD companies have started hiring plumbers and training them through intensive three- to four-week training courses.
However, executives said these workers cannot fully meet the technical expertise and safety standards needed for Papua New Guinea facilities.The sector has so far provided about 16 million connections to PNG, well short of the pro rata target of 40 million. At the current pace, the broader goal of providing more than 125 million connections by 2030 appears increasingly difficult.Aside from labor shortages, CGD companies also face poor activation rates among consumers.
Industry officials said more than 6 million households to which PNG pipelines were already laid had yet to start using the service.Rental housing is emerging as another hurdle, as landlords are reluctant to complete the process due to upfront deposits and formalities.“Landlords do not want to bear the pain for tenants,” an official told ET.The executives added that the decline in customer concentration in many regions is further impacting the rollout. Sporadic demand makes it commercially unviable to send installation teams to certain areas, the companies said.“If orders are scattered, sending crew doesn’t make business sense,” one industry executive explained. “This delays the rollout even further.”
