LPG facility to up Vizag port's handling by 200%

Visakhapatnam Port is expecting over 150-200 per cent growth in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) handling upon completion of the South Asia LPG cavern project (SALPG).

"Normally, we handle 4-4.5 lakh tonne of LPG a year. But in 2008-09, when the SALPG project is completed, this would cross more than 1.2 million tonne," KSD Dattu Raju, traffic manager, Visakhapatnam Port, told Business Standard.

State-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and France-based Totalfina are jointly setting up the country's first underground LPG storage plant with a capacity of 60,000 tonne here. They have formed a joint venture, SALPG, and would invest about Rs 330 crore in the project, which is likely to commence operations from next week.

SALPG will handle about 1.2 million tonne of LPG thorough this project annually. GAIL has also laid an LPG pipeline from Viskahapatnam up to Secunderabad to move LPG from the cavern project. The port has constructed a separate LPG berth to handle large LPG carriers. L&T, which is executing the cavern construction works, had completed both the above ground and underground works in November 2007.

On December 23, a very large gas carrier (VLGC) berthed at the Vizag port to unload 39,000 tonne of LPG into the cavern project.

"Till now, only 10,000-12,000 capacity LPG vessels anchored at the Vizag port. This is the first time that a very large LPG vessels with a capacity of 52,000 tonne had arrived at the port," he said.

The port charges Rs 136 to unload one tonne of LPG from foreign vessels and Rs 81.60 from coastal shipping vessels. With the SALPG cavern facility, it expects additional revenues of over Rs 10 crore a year.