BHUBANESWAR: With the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), a Maharatna PSU, announcing to set up another bottling plant in the State, Odisha is going to have its fifth LPG bottling plant in next couple of years.
The BPCL bottling plant will be located at Barkhani, about 12 km from Balangir Railway station. The Oil marketing company is already having a LPG bottling plant at Khurda.
Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Thawar Chand Gehlot are scheduled to lay the foundation stone of the plant on May 21.
Regional LPG Manager (East) Atul Kumar said the plant will be spread over 23 acre and will have the capacity to produce 42 lakh cylinders per year.
The plant is expected to be operational by March 2020, he informed. BPCL has 15.37 lakh customers who use around 78 lakh cylinders in a year.
The consumption is expected to increase to 105 lakh cylinders by 2020.
“The decision to set up the plant at Balangir was taken keeping in mind the growing LPG demand in the State particularly in the Western and South-Western regions. The location was finalised considering its logistics advantages,” said Head of Infrastructure Task Force (East) Manas Mohanty.
Odisha has four LPG bottling plants at Balasore, Jharsuguda, Khurda and Jatni. With three new plants, including the one at Balangir, being planned by the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs), the State will have seven plants. having a capacity of 4.06 crore cylinders per annum.
Two other plants are likely to set up at Bhubaneswar and Rayagada. While the current bottling capacity of the four plants is 2.80 crore cylinders per annum, the bottling capacity will increase to 4.06 crore cylinders annually once three new plants start production.
Balangir plant once commissioned will supply LPG cylinders to the consumers in 14 districts - Balangir, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Sonepur Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur, Boudh, Kandhamal, Rayagada and Nuapada.
LPG consumers in Odisha have gone up from 20.22 lakh as on June 1, 2014 to 62.17 lakh on May 1 this year recording a growth of 207.5 per cent. The demand for packed LPG in the State was 454.3 MT last year and it is expected to be 610 MT by 2020.
Balangir MP Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo, Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra and Patnagarh MLA Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo are slated to attend the foundation stone laying ceremony.