IOC-Petronas to pump in Rs 400cr for LNG terminal

Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and its partner, Malaysia's Petronas, will invest about Rs 400 crore to build an LPG import terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu. Indian Oil Petronas, the joint venture company floated by IOC and Petronas, will build a 600,000 tonnes a year LPG import terminal at Ennore, company sources said.

The joint venture, which currently operates a similar terminal at Haldia in West Bengal, would build two cryogenic storage tanks of 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes to store LPG at -42 degrees centigrade.

In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, state-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) has tied-up with Total of France and would be spending Rs 300 crore to set up an LPG import terminal and an underground storage facility at Visakhapatnam. While India is self-sufficient in other petroleum products, it has to import LPG to meet domestic requirements.

Sources said Indian Oil Petronas would begin construction of the Ennore terminal early next year and would commission the facility in first half of 2009. The joint venture has appointed Triune as the project management consultant. Petronas has committed to supply 300,000 tonnes of LPG to Ennore, reducing dependence on over-stretched Mangalore import terminal. Moving LPG from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu, which estimates say would be 450,000 tonnes per annum from 2009, is difficult.

While LPG at Ennore would be stored in over-land tanks, HPCL is using natural rock caves 160-meter underground to store imported LPG at Visakhapatnam. HPCL, which currently moves LPG to Andhra Pradesh from Mangalore via a 900-km pipeline, plans to commission the Vizag facility by the second quarter of 2007, sources said. Both Ennore and Vizag can berth larger vessels as compared to Mangalore, which can only berth LPG carriers with a maximum 20,000-tonnes capacity.