Panipat-Jalandhar LPG pipeline by Dec
New Delhi   01-Apr-2008
The first liquefied petroleum gas {LPG) pipeline in North India will be commissioned by the end of this year. IndianOil, which is laying the 275-km pipeline for the supply of LPG from its Panipat refinery to Jalandhar, hopes to complete the project by December. Top officials in IndianOil informed TNS here today that they have received all permissions for execution of the work after getting a Right of Way (RoW) from the Punjab government. The laying of this pipeline will help movement of LPG through the pipeline, instead of tankers. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 186 crore. It may be noted that the only other LPG pipeline in the country is between Jamnagar (Gujarat) and Loni (Noida) and has been laid by Reliance Industries. The pipeline, with a 10-inch diameter, will have a discharge capacity of 243 kilolitres per hour. Officials said, the pipeline would be laid from Panipat to Jalandhar, via Lehragagga, Nabha and Khanna. Since a pipeline already exists between Panipat and Lehragagga (Kandla Bathinda pipeline (KBPL)) and between Khanna and Jalandhar (part of Mathura-Jalandhar Petro Line (MJPL), a fresh pipeline is being laid only between Lehragagga and Jalandhar. “The laying of this pipeline will help the company deal with the problem of unloading and loading of tankers and save transportation costs. This will also help us to deal with the problem of losses suffered’ as a result of road accidents involving tankers," said a senior official in IndianOil. He also informed TNS that IndianOil has increased its total capacity of LPG at its bottling plant in Jalandhar. The capacity of the Jalandhar plant has been increased from 150 thousand metric ton per annum (TMTA) to 220 TMTA. This has been done keeping in view the increasing demand for LPG with this increase in capacity, the total bottling capacity of our plants in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir would be around 480 TMTA.