GAIL chairman and managing director, CR Prasad, made this offer to the state government in a meeting with the chief minister, Rajasthan, Ashok Ghelot, in Jaipur on Tuesday.

A detailed presentation on this proposal was also made by GAIL before the chief secretary of Rajasthan, Inderjit Khanna and a senior team of secretaries in Jaipur. The presentation covered GAIL's activities, and its forthcoming plans in Rajasthan.

Prasad also informed the chief minister that GAIL would shortly commission the world's longest LPG Pipeline passing through Rajasthan which will make available 450,000 tonne of LPG in the state, equivalent to the requirement of 30 lakh households. GAIL plans to commission this pipeline by October-December.

Rajasthan is among the first states in India where GAIL commenced its operations during the construction of the HBJ Pipeline. Prasad has expressed hope that soon this same pipeline would be able to provide additional gas to the state following the import of LNG at Dahej as also develop the necessary gas infrastructure.

The LNG Terminal at Dahej is likely to be commissioned by 2003 and the re-gasified gas of about 20 MMSCMD will be transported through GAIL's HBJ pipeline system to meet the additional requirement of Natural Gas within Rajasthan and other states in northern India.

The proposed scale of investment for Rajasthan, especially in the areas of in-suit gasification, telecom and power Sector, were also explained to the chief secretary and senior officials in GAIL's presentation.

Among other major issues discussed were the modalities for signing a gas co-operation agreement which would detail the natural gas requirement of the state for its industries following the possibility of increased gas availability, the telecom infrastructure which GAIL could provide for carriers in the state.

GAIL's major current activity in the state, apart from gas supplies, is laying of the 1230 km , world's longest exclusive LPG Pipeline (Jamnagar - Loni) of which almost half is passing through the state of Rajasthan.

GAIL is laying high capacity expandable fibre optic cable network alongside the LPG pipeline. This network in the state which will cover more than 12 major commercial centers and would be setup within the next 24 months, with a capacity of more than 2.5 GBPS.

In the first phase, the existing network shall be expanded to Jodhpur and Udaipur. GAIL would provide end to end bandwidth in this network which will allow services providers like basic cellular, ISP, long distance operators to roll out services and encourage competitive services to consumers at affordable price.

This network would further connect cities in Rajasthan to other cities spread over 6 states in the North and West of the country. This would enable Internet Service Providers to connect to FLAG at Mumbai.