While 51 out of these 72 CNG fuelling facilities are located in NCT of Delhi, 21 are located in NCR towns of Greater Noida and Ghaziabad.
Indraprastha Gas Ltd, the sole retailer of CNG to automobiles in the national capital, today said it has set up a record 72 CNG filling stations in first four months of 2016, to meet the rising demand for the fuel.
The CNG filling facilities have been set up at the retail outlets of oil marketing companies (OMC) like Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) since January 2016, the company said in a statement.
"While 51 out of these 72 CNG fuelling facilities are located in NCT of Delhi, 21 are located in NCR towns of Greater Noida and Ghaziabad," it said.
IGL, a joint venture of GAIL (India) Ltd and BPCL, is the largest CNG distribution company in the country.
Company Managing Director Narendra Kumar said another 18 CNG fueling facilities will be set up within May to meet the Supreme Court set target of setting new facilities to cater to growing demand.
As per directions of the Supreme Court, 104 new CNG fuelling stations were to be set up in Delhi and NCR, out of which IGL had been assigned the task of setting up 90 new facilities.
"The augmentation of CNG infrastructure by IGL along with an increase in the number of commercial as well as private vehicles running on CNG has resulted in increase in demand of CNG," it said.
While all the taxis running in Delhi and NCR have been mandated to run on CNG by Supreme Court, there has also been a spurt in conversion of private cars to CNG mode in last few months due to initiatives aimed at curbing pollution in the region.
IGL is currently selling CNG to over 8 lakh CNG driven vehicles, while catering to the largest road based public transport fleet of buses in the world, the statement said.
"There has been a growth of around 8 per cent in average daily CNG sales since January 2016 with IGL recording peak CNG sale of 27.26 lakh kg per day. IGL has been registering average sale of over 26 lakh kg per day on working days in the last fortnight," it said.
With the recent expansion of IGL's CNG refuelling infrastructure at a cost of over Rs 250 crore, its installed compression capacity has crossed 70 lakh kg per day, which is enough to dispense over 35 lakh kg per day.
With the objective of incentivising CNG refueling during non-peak hours, IGL has already introduced differential pricing by offering a discount of Rs 1.50 per kg on the selling price CNG for filling between midnight and 0500 hours at its select 230 outlets.
Apart from being a clean fuel, CNG also offers economical fuel solutions for the transport sector. At the current level prices in Delhi, CNG offers over 57 per cent savings towards the running cost when compared to petrol driven vehicles. When compared to diesel driven vehicles, the economics in favour of CNG at revised price would be over 28 per cent, IGL added.