In a red letter day for the steel city on Friday, Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Arjun Munda and chief minister Raghubar Das will inaugurate the direct supply of piped natural gas to kitchens and a supply station for compressed natural gas for vehicles at an event at Gopal Maidan.

For starters, piped natural gas will be supplied to domestic consumers at the upscale Ashiana Gardens in Sonari. The gas will be supplied from a decompression unit set up near the Tribal Culture Society in Sonari. The CNG supply station for CNG-run vehicles has come up in Mango.

Announcing these at a news meet here in the steel city on Thursday, K.B. Singh, executive director (eastern region) of GAIL India said the supply would be made under the Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga scheme and also the city gas distribution projects that were earlier launched in Ranchi in August.

Initially, natural gas would reach Jamshedpur in special containers (cylinders) called cascades, transported by road from Patna, Singh said. Then, the gas will be installed at the decompression unit in Sonari and supplied to homes.

“Later, natural gas would be supplied to the steel through a pipeline directly from Purulia in Bengal,” the senior GAIL official said.

During the inauguration ceremony, work will also commence for laying a 125-km-long pipeline from Purulia to Jamshedpur, he said. This will feed networks of East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan.

“Not just households, several rolling steel, wire and pipe manufacturers and automobile industries will gain from cheaper and continuous supply of fuel,” he explained.

The total area of Jamshedpur City Gas Distribution project will cover 3,562sqkm. Under the project, more than 1 lakh households will get the benefits of piped natural gas in a phased manner.

At the moment, Ashiana Gardens and some other apartments in Sonari — 3,600 homes in all — will get piped natural gas connection. In the second phase, piped gas will reach the apartments of Mango.

GAIL officials told the media that in the coming years, 22 CNG stations would be commissioned in Jharkhand (Ranchi and Jamshedpur). Eleven CNG stations will come up in Jamshedpur to supply compressed natural gas to over 1.25 lakh vehicles and piped natural gas to 2.43 lakh households. “That’s the broad outline,” an official said.

This August, direct supply of piped natural gas to kitchens in certain areas, including Shyamali Colony, and compressed natural gas for vehicles, was introduced in the capital.

Two months down the line, Singh said that they were getting good response from homemakers to piped natural gas, which is around 15 per cent cheaper than LPG for cooking.

He added that CNG supply had also been getting good response from Ranchi vehicle owners. “As of now, Ranchi has around 300 CNG vehicles, including autos, and the daily sale of CNG in the capital is over 900kg,” he said.

He added that in Jamshedpur they would also organise meetings with bankers, vehicle suppliers and operators/transporters to start the process of introducing a conversion scheme of existing vehicles that ran on conventional fuels.