For achieving increasing demand, HPCL soon to start new LPG plant at Rayagada, Odisha
Bhubaneshwar, Feb 18: Odisha is a state with growing demands for fuel, considering this growing need of LPG, the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) is starting a new LPG bottling plant with a capacity of filling 42 lakhs cylinders per year at Rayagada in Odisha.
This plan was announced by company officials in Bhubaneshwar in last week.
Mr. Dharmendra Behura, CL Deputy General Manager, LPG Region, Bhubaneshwar said an official statement, the new plant will be the 2nd LPG bottling plant of HPCL in Odisha as it already has one in Jatni. State-owned oil marketing companies now have LPG bottling plants at Balasore, Jharsuguda, Khurda, and Jatni in the state.
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lay the foundation for the plant on February 19.
The current bottling capacity of the four plants is 2.80 crore cylinders per annum. In addition to the proposed plant at Rayagada, oil marketing companies have plans to set up new plants at Bhubaneswar and Balangir, Behura said. Odisha will then have a total of seven LPG bottling plants and their total capacity will be about 4.06 crore cylinders per annum.
Further Mr. Behura added, There has been a significant growth of LPG in Odisha where the LPG consumer base of 20.22 lakh as in 2014 has grown up to 76.65 lakh now, an increase 279.1 %. The demand for packed LPG in Odisha was 3.2 crore cylinder last year which is expected to be 4.3 crores cylinder by 2020.
The HPCL has 26.64 lakhs customers at present and they consume about 1.3 crore cylinders in a year and it is expected to increase to 1.6 crore cylinders by 2020. With the LPG demand growing particularly in Western and south-western Odisha, need for putting up a new bottling plant was felt and the historical town of Rayagada was chosen for locating it considering its logistics advantage.
The Rayagada plant, once commissioned, shall be supplying cylinders to the consumers in 11 districts.