Rayagada: The foundation to set up the state’s sixth LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) bottling plant in the district will be laid by Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan Tuesday.
The plant will be set up by the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), a Navaratna PSU under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, with a capacity of filling 42 lakh cylinders per year in Rayagada to meet the growing consumer needs.
State-owned companies have LPG bottling units at Balasore, Jharsuguda, Khurda and Jatni in Odisha. 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 units at Bhubaneswar and Bolangir. With the demand for LPG growing particularly in Western and south-western Odisha, the need to set up a new bottling plant was felt at Rayagada considering its logistics, Behura said.
The Rayagada plant, once commissioned, shall supply gas to the consumers in 11 districts –Bolangir, Kalahandi, Subarnapur, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangapur, Boudh, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Nuapada and Rayagada. The demand for cooking gas which stood at 1.06 lakh cylinders per month in 2014 will go up to 2.06 lakh cylinders a month in 2019 in these districts.
There has been a significant growth of cooking gas consumption in Odisha as the LPG consumer base of 20.22 lakh as in June, 2014 has grown to 76.65 lakh by February 1, 2019 with an increase of 279.1 per cent. The demand for packed LPG in the State was 3.2 crore last year and the figure is expected to reach 4.3 crore by 2020.
PNN