Vice President Venkaiah Naidu to dedicate Balangir LPG plant to nation on December 27

With the plant at Barkani nearly 12 km from Balangir railway station, the State will have five bottling plants, including the existing four at Balasore, Jharsuguda, Khurda and Jatni.
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu. (Photo | PTI )
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu. (Photo | PTI )

BHUBANESWAR: Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) has completed construction of its second LPG bottling plant at Balangir in a record 19 months. Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu will dedicate the plant to the nation on December 27.

With the plant at Barkani nearly 12 km from Balangir railway station, the State will have five bottling plants, including the existing four at Balasore, Jharsuguda, Khurda and Jatni.

The plant built at a cost of Rs 103 crore is spread over 23 acre and has the capacity to produce 42 lakh cylinders per year. It houses facilities like 24 station electronic carousel, fire water tanks of 1,853-kilo litre capacity each, filling and filled shed, eight bay tank lorry decantation gantry and three 300 tonne mounded storage vessel.

Regional LPG Manager (East) of BPCL Atul Kumar said 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.

With the LPG demand growing in the State particularly in western and south-western Odisha, need for putting up a new bottling at Balangir was decided after considering the logistics advantage of the location. BPCL has 21.59 lakh customers who consume approximately 78 lakh cylinders in a year.

The consumption is expected to increase to 105 lakh cylinders by end of 2020, said Kumar.LPG consumers in Odisha have grown up from 20.22 lakh in 2014 to 88.1 lakh in 2019 which is an increase of customer base by 335.71 per cent during the five year period.

The demand for packed LPG in the State was 454.3 thousand tonne last year which is expected to reach 610 thousand tonne by end of 2020.

BPCL’s State Head (LPG) for Odisha and Jharkhand Sanjay Sharma said the LPG penetration which was 20 per cent in 2014 has increased to 81.3 per cent by 2019 with a rise of 61.3 per cent. The number of distributors in the State has also grown from 367 in 2014 to 932 with an addition of 565 new distributorships in the last four years, he added.

The State will soon have seven LPG bottling plants with two more plants coming up at Bhubaneswar and Rayagada. While the current bottling capacity of the existing four plants is 2.8 crore cylinders per annum, the bottling capacity will increase to 4.06 crore cylinders annually once all seven plants start production.

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