The 22 cities are spread across the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. It includes the cities of Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Rajkot, Allahabad, Gwalior, Indore, Jodhpur, Patna, Chennai, Agartala, Mathura and Bangalore.

According to GAIL Chairman Proshanto Banerjee, in an interview with the Financial Express newspaper, “GAIL and the JV partner will hold a 22.5% stake each with the state government being offered another 5%. Gail has decided on a cap of 50% for the promoters, the balance to be distributed between institutional and retail investors. The cost of the project for each city is roughly Rs 500 crore (US$109 million).”

“The petrol pumps run by the PSUs (public sector utility) will be used as the storage point, from where the gas would be supplied to individual societies. Hence, we need the co-operation of the companies who run petrol pumps in these cities,” he added.

GAIL currently has a single JV with the Maharashtra government and British Gas which supplies 200,000 customers in Mumbai alone.