Mumbai: Public sector GAIL (India) Ltd and Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) will set up a joint venture company for laying pipelines to transport natural gas from the east coast of India to consumption centres.

"GAIL and ONGC have finalised a draft MoU for setting up of a joint venture for laying and operating gas pipeline network in respect of exploitation of possible gas discovery in Krishna Godavari and Mahanadi basins," minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Dinsha Patel said informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

"GAIL is operating more than 5,600km of pipelines with a capacity of around 130-million standard cubic meters per day for transportation of natural gas to various customers in the country," Patel added.

ONGC has struck gas reserves off the Andhra and Orissa coasts and is looking at plans to evacuate the gas to consumption centres.

The joint venture will transport gas to the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and in the east to West Bengal.

GAIL plans to lay a pipeline from Jagdishpur in Uttar Pradesh (where the Hazira-Vajaipur-Jagdishpur pipeline ends) to Haldia near Kolkata. It is also extending the Dahej-panel pipeline (for transporting gas from Gujarat import point to Dabhol Power Project in Maharashtra) to Goa and onwards to Mangalore (and Bangalore) and to Kochi, inter-connecting all the LNG import terminals - Petronet`s Dahej terminal with Shell`s Hazira, Dabhol facility, ONGC will have its terminal possibly at Mangalore while Petronet is setting up a terminal at Kochi in Kerala.