(TOI)
Indian Oil Corporation’s (IOC) upcoming terminals to import LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) at Kochi and Paradip would commence operations by 2018, a senior official said. “They are likely to be completed in 2018,” said R Sitharthan, executive director, IOC, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
The company now has a LPG import terminal at Kandla in Gujarat. IOC, the country’s largest fuel retailer, is expanding capacity at the import terminal from 1.5 million tonnes per annum to 2.5 million. “The import terminals are being built to meet growing demand,” Sitharthan said on the sidelines of an event held here to launch ‘Indane Jumbo’, IOC’s ‘mini bulk’ LPG product that caters to the requirements of industrial and commercial units.
‘Indane’, IOC’s LPG brand, registered a 10% year-on-year growth in volumes to cross the “milestone of 10 million tonnes” during 2016-17, he said. The company’s bottling plants roll out 2 million LPG cylinders a day, making IOC the second largest marketer of LPG globally, after SHV Gas of The Netherlands. Incidentally, India became the second largest domestic LPG consumer in the world in February this year. The Kochi and Paradip LPG terminals would each have a capacity of 6 lakh tonnes per annum. The Kochi project, comprising the import terminal, a multi-user liquid terminal, the Kochi-Salem LPG pipeline and a bulk terminal at Palakkad, is being set up at a cost of Rs. 2200 crore, out of which about Rs. 670 crore is towards labour cost.
