The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) would soon discuss the note circulated by the petroleum ministry  on allocation of natural gas.

According to the note, the petroleum ministry wants to discontinue the practice of giving priority to urea plants over power plants for allocation of natural gas.

The ministry has put two options before the EGoM headed by Defence Minister AK Antony -- equal priority to all core sectors of fertilisers, LPG, power and city gas distribution or according fertiliser and power equal priority.

If the note is accepted, the reduced gas output from the Reliance Industries' (RIL) eastern offshore KG-D6 fields would be allotted evenly to urea and power plants.

Following the reduction in the gas output from the fields,  supply of the fuel to 25 power plants was completely stopped recently. It may be recalled that these plants  signed for 29.74 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd) of KG-D6 from November 2011.

It is argued that the current KG-D6 production of about 15.3 mmscmd is just sufficient to meet the full requirement of fertiliser sector and some of LPG plants, leaving no gas for power plants.

If available gas is to be redistributed among the four core sectors, supply to power sector will increase by 10.07 mmscmd, resulting in additional production of about 16,000 million units of electricity per annum.