India mulls setting up $5.1 billion power station in Iran

New Delhi: India may set up a $5.1 billion (Rs20,000 crore) natural gas-fired power plant in Iran, which may generate anything between 4,000-6,000 megawatts, depending on its final size and unit configuration, according to secretary, ministry of power, HS Brahma.

For evacuating power from Iran to India, the two options available are either over land or through an undersea transmission cable. Both these options are being explored, Brahma said here.

''Iran has plentiful of gas and we have good relations with the country,'' Brahma told reporters.

Brahma also said that state-owned NTPC Ltd would very likely build the station and the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd would set up the accompanying transmission network to wheel electricity from Iran to India.

Iran hosts the world's second-largest reserves of natural gas. Over the years, energy starved India has considered various options, including construction of gas pipelines from Iran through Pakistan's troubled Balochistan province, as well as longer pipelines stretching from Turkmenistan via Pakistan into India.

The impracticality of these proposals, as they depend on passage through troubled regions of insurgency-torn Pakistan and Afghanistan, have ensured they exist as paper proposals.