New Delhi: Oil and Natural Gas public sector units (PSUs), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), Oil India Ltd and GAIL etc are in the process of setting up Pressure Swing Adsorption medical oxygen generation plants at seven location in Odisha.
According to the ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the Oil PSUs are setting up plants at 93 locations across the country to facilitate the hospitals with captive oxygen generation facilities to strengthen availability and supply of medical-grade oxygen.
The ministry informed that IOCL has been tasked with removing bottlenecks in the logistics, transport and supply of medical oxygen. “IOCL is procuring ISO cryogenic containers for transport of LMO. Nine tankers have been contracted, software and app to manage the movement is under progress for roll-out,” the ministry informed.
It is to be mentioned here that many hospitals across the country have been witnessing acute shortage of medical oxygen, which has been resulted in death of many Covid-19 patients. The country has been recording a global high of over three lakh Covid-19 detections everyday for the last few days.
In order to address the humongous challenge posed by the second wave, the Union ministry roped in the oil and gas PSUs to strengthen the public health care infrastructure.
“The PSUs are making all out efforts to respond to the nation’s call in strengthening public healthcare infrastructure and ironing out blind spots in supply chains. The oil sector is currently diverting 965 Metric Tonnes (MT) of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) daily. LMO in the range of 2,500-3,000 MT is being diverted daily to hospitals across the country by the steel sector to boost availability of medical-grade Oxygen for treatment of Covid-19 patients,” the ministry informed.
PNN