KOCHI: The Kochi-Salem Pipeline Pvt Ltd (KSPPL), the LPG pipeline project implemented by a 50:50 joint venture between BPCL and IOCL, will finally be commissioned up to Palakkad in April 2020, after prolonged delays which saw the project commissioning deadline being postponed from April 2018 due to lack of various approvals for different phases.
The overall length of the pipeline has also been reduced to 206 km till Palakkad from 428km, which was initially up to Salem. Failure in getting clearance from the Tamil Nadu government forced the company to terminate the pipeline at Palakkad, as of now.
Prasad K Panicker, executive director, and head of BPCL Kochi Refinery, said that though the project will be commissioned in April, the operations will begin by only May-June. The Rs 1000 crore-worth project is being implemented in three phases.
The first phase from BPCL's Kochi Refinery to IOCL's bottling plant at Udyamperoor was completed about 4-5 months back. The first phase has a capacity of 12,000-15,000 tonnnes a month.
The second phase of the project is from Kochi to Palakkad. "While HPCL has a bottling plant at Palakkad, IOCL and BPCL have plants in Coimbatore. Our plan is to take the LPG via the tanker lorries to Coimbatore as we are yet to get the approval from the Tamil Nadu government for the pipeline laying there," Panicker, who is retiring on Tuesday after leading BPCL-Kochi for seven years, told TNIE.
He said that the third phase (Kochi Refinery to Puthuvypeen) pipeline works lag behind with only about 30 per cent completion due to the protests at the IOCL's LPG import terminal.
With works at Puthuvypeen resuming again recently, Panicker said that the 44-km pipeline works from BPCL Kochi to Puthuvupeen is back in full swing. "We expect the Puthuvypeen phase to be completed in another 14 months," he said.
In the BPCL to Udayamperoor phase alone, a total of 800 LPG tanker lorries will stay away from the roads per month while in the Kochi-Palakkad stretch, over 2200 LPG trucks will be off the roads once the project becomes operational in May-June.
Kochi-Salem Pipeline project details