Silchar, Feb. 10 :     The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has struck substantial quantities of natural gas in two gasfields in Tripura. ONGC regional director (central regional business centre) P.K. Adak said here today rich quantities of natural gas struck last week at Agartala Dome and Trichna gasfields in the state after yearlong drilling would further open up prospects of tapping the gas available in the state by the power, fertiliser and domestic sectors. He said the newly-drilled well at Agartala Dome, 10 km from the city, would make available four billion cubic metres of natural gas from its reservoir. The other one at Trichna, 45 km south of Agartala, would be able to harness nearly two billion cubic metres of gas from its shallow 800-metre reservoir, where the sand column is estimated at 60 metres. Adak said the public sector North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (Neepco), buoyed by these new findings in Tripura, has mooted a scheme to set up a mammoth 500 mw gas-based thermal power project in the power-starved state. Neepco chairman-cum-managing director P.K. Kotoky, who was here today in connection with the two-day meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on energy, said Neepco was expected to select Melaghar near Agartala as the possible site of the Rs 3,000-crore power project. This would be the biggest power project in the state. Neepco would take nearly three years to commission this gas-based project, he added. Adak said Tripura's potential of natural gas output at present is estimated at 3 million cubic metres of gas a day, but ONGC could supply 1 million cubic metres of gas a day from it to the Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL) as the demand for it is not high in this industrially backward state. The rest of the production is capped. At present, apart from Neepco, GAIL is supplying gas extracted from Tripura's gasfields to the Tripura State Electricity Department and the Tripura Natural Gas Corporation, Adak added. He said ONGC has drilled a total of 94 gas wells since 1994 and found gas in 46 such wells. The clusters of gas-bearing wells are spread around Rokhia, Barmura and Gajolia. The regional director also said GAIL had laid 54 km of a pipeline network in the state at a cost of Rs 41 crore to help supply gas to consumers. Rebels held: Police arrested two militants in Mawlai led and seized an AK-47 and AK-56 from them. Their identities is yet to be reveled by the police, adds our Shillong correspondent.