The chunk of the investment, over Rs 716 crore, will be made in setting up new LPG bottling plants and expanding some of the existing plants besides the LPG import facility at Haldia, S Rammohan, Indian Oil Corporation executive director (marketing division), eastern region, said here.
He said at present waitlist for new LPG connections in the eastern region alone stood at nearly 17 lakh, adding that the number of waitlisted consumers with Indian Oil Corporation was about 11 lakh.
The remaining were with two other oil PSUs, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.
The existing 13 LPG bottling plants in the region have a combined capacity of 344,000 tonne including the two recently-commissioned plants at Tripura and Sikkim.
Attributing LPG shortage to the lack of handling facility at the ports except Mumbai and Vishakhapatnam, Rammohan said to overcome the problem, Indian Oil Corporation had decided to set up an LPG import facility at Haldia port at a cost of Rs 170 crore with a capacity of four lakh tonne per annum.
Of the 100 acre land required for the high-risk facility, 70 acre had already been acquired
. The facility will be fully operational by the year 2000 though a part of it would be commissioned by 1998.
Referring to the availability of LPG, Rammohan said the eastern refineries supplied 42,000 tonne, Bongaigaon refinery- 18,000 tonne and Oil India refinery at Duliajan- 28,000 tonne while 280,000 tonne were made available from Vizag and Vijaipur.
At present, the Mumbai port has a LPG handling facility while the naval jetty at Vishakhapatnam could be used only on the weekend for LPG import. Another LPG handling facility being installed at the Kandla port with a capacity of six lakh tonne per annum will be operational shortly.
Rammohan said the capacity of the existing bottling plants at Kalyani, Durgapur, Jamshedpur and Balasore was being augmented by 134,000 tonne at a cost of over Rs 15 crore. The capacity expansion will be over by March next year.
Additional capacity of 96,000 tonnes was being created under the 8th plan/non-plan schemes with two major bottling plants and six mini plants at a cost of Rs 133 crore. Of the 8 new plants, a 44,000-tonne bottling plant will come up at Budge Budge by March, 1997 while the seven others will be set up at Guwahati, Imphal, Dimapur, Barapani, Hal-ongi, Port Blair and Mizoram by 1998-99.
