New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) have bagged two licenses each for retailing CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in the latest bid round, regulator PNGRB said on Wednesday.

Seven companies had put in 21 bids for city gas licences in five areas in states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

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The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) had offered 5 Geographical Areas (GAs), spread over 27 districts in five states, in the 11A city gas distribution (CGD) bid round.

BPCL won the license for a GA comprising districts such as Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur and Mahrajganj in Uttar Pradesh and another for Chhattisgarh's Koriya, Surajpur, Balrampur and Surguja districts have been clubbed into one GA, PNGRB said in a statement.

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HPCL won the license for a GA made up of Banka in Bihar as well as Dumka, Godda, Jamtara and Pakur districts in Jharkhand. It also won the license for GA made up of Birbhum, Murshidabad, Malda and Dakshin Dinajpur districts of West Bengal.

GAIL Gas Ltd, a unit of state gas utility GAIL, won the license for the Kodagan, Bastar, Sukma, Bijapur and Dantewada districts in Chhattisgarh.

"Letter(s) of Intent to successful bidders for the 5 GAs has been issued on April 27, 2022," the PNGRB noted.

Bids for the 5 GAs were received on April 6, it said. "21 bids have been received from 7 bidders with no single bid in any GA."

The sixth GA of Yanam in Puducherry has been added to the bid round and bids for this area are due on May 10.

After this bid round, about 88 per cent of the country's area would be authorised for the development of city gas distribution (CGD) network to provide access to natural gas to approximately 98 per cent of the population, the PNGRB said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)