Patna: Residents of the State Electricity Board Colony, the building construction department quarters, BIT Mesra Patna campus quarters and Jalalpur City will be the first to get piped natural gas connection in the city.

GAIL India Limited is set to launch the registration drive in these colonies for this facility, a first for the city.

"In the first phase, PNG connection would be provided to over 1,300 houses and we have selected the agency that would undertake the registration work of customers," said GAIL eastern region executive director Krishna Ballabh Singh.

Jalalpur City resident Sanjay Kumar said: "I am really excited about the facility but would opt for the connection only after cross-checking the details with the team that would come for registration work."

Customers would have to pay around Rs 5,000 for registration. The PNG is priced at around Rs 23 per kg for consumers. In case of LPG the price is around Rs 33.87 per kg (subsidised) or Rs 51.76 per kg (without subsidy), going by April 2018 prices.

Singh said work on creating the necessary infrastructure for supplying the PNG to households would be carried out simultaneously so that the registered customers could start getting the PNG supply as soon as the facility is launched in the capital.

He said the main pipeline had already been laid till Varanasi, and work to connect Varanasi with Gaya was on.

"We need to lay around 95km of pipeline for this and it would be completed by July this year after which necessary trials would be done before starting the actual supply of gas," he added.

Pipeline connectivity between Gaya and Patna has already been completed. Patna would get gas from the pipeline that connects Dobhi in Gaya via Silao in Nalanda (83km) and from Silao to Naubatpur (65km). Naubatpur is around 20km southwest of Patna.

The gas pipeline being laid in Bihar is part of the Jagdishpur-Haldia gas pipeline.

The project (Jagdishpur-Haldia) entails laying 2,000km of gas pipeline that would touch Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal.

The project has a cost component of Rs 11,000 crore. Over 200km of aforesaid gas pipeline would be laid in Bihar in the first phase of Jagdishpur-Haldiagas pipeline.

The three sections on which pipelines have to be laid in Bihar are Dobhi-Silao (83km), Silao-Naubatpur (65km) and Silao-Barauni (80km).

As far as injecting gas to the laid pipeline is concerned, this would be done from October this year when the main pipeline would be connected with the injection point at Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. GAIL has already started supplying gas up to Allahabad through its supply lines which bring gas from Bombay High and Dahej in Gujarat from where imported gas is pumped into the main line.