Agartala, Aug. 25: The 100MW thermal power plant at Monarchak, 70km southwest of Agartala, cannot start production because of the delay in supply of natural gas by the ONGC.

Commissioned by the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (Neepco), the Rs 1,007.57-crore plant will export power to Bangladesh. The delay is costing Neepco dear as it is incurring heavy losses.

According to Neepco general manager Samar Ranjan Biswas, in view of the delayed commercial generation of power from the project, the corporation has been incurring a loss of Rs 13.20 crore every month.

"ONGC's repeated dilly-dallying on supplying gas has delayed the commencement of commercial generation of electricity from this power project and this has already resulted in huge losses," Biswas said.

"Conceived in 2000 with an installed capacity of 500MW, the power plant's capacity was reduced to 280MW in 2003-04 after the ONGC reduced its gas allocation by half. By May 2004, Neepco had established all infrastructure for the 280MW plant," Biswas said.

"The ONGC further cut the gas allocation in 2008, forcing Neepco to scale down the installed capacity of the project to 101MW," said Biswas, who heads the project.

"The commercial generation of electricity of this combined cycle power plant (65.42MW gas turbine and 36.25MW steam turbine) would start as and when the ONGC starts supplying gas," he said.

Assigning no reasons for the delay, ONGC executive director S.C. Soni said they would be able to supply 0.50 million standard cubic metres per day gas to the Neepco project by December or January next year.