Bhubaneswar : Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), a Navaratna PSU under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas is setting up a LPG Bottling Plant at IID Center, Rayagada in Odisha State. HPCL is presently having a LPG Bottling Plant at Jatni in Khurda District. Union Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lay the foundation stone in Raygada on 19th of the this month.
The new plant to be constructed at Rayagada, will be the second LPG Bottling Plant of HPCL in the State of Odisha, said Dharmendra Behura, Deputy General Manager, LPG Region, Bhubaneswar, HPCL . Oil Marketing Companies are having LPG Bottling Plants at Balasore, Jharsuguda, Khurda and Jatni. The current bottling capacity of these 4 plants is 2.80 Crores cylinders per annum. In addition to the proposed LPG Bottling Plant at Rayagada, Oil Marketing Companies have plans to set up new plants at Bhubaneswar and Balangir. With the commissioning of three new LPG Bottling Plants, Odisha will have a total of 7 LPG Bottling Plants. The bottling capacity of these 7 bottling plants will be about 4.06 crores cylinders per annum.
HPCL has 26.64 lakhs customers as on 1stFebruary and consume about 1.3Crores cylinders in a year. This consumption is expected to increase to 1.6 Crores cylinders by 2020. With the LPG demand growing in the State particularly in the 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 the plant considering the logistics advantage of the location. The LPG Plant at Rayagada will be constructed at IID Center, Rayagada which is around 5 KMs from Rayagada Railway station. The plant will be spread over 21 acres and will have the capacity of filling42 lakh cylinders per year. The plant is expected to be operational by September 2020.
Rayagada Plant,once commissioned shall be supplying LPG cylinders to the consumers in 11 districts of Odisha namely: Balangir, Kalahandi, Sonepur, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangapur, Boudh, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Rayagada and Nuapada.The Rayagada LPG Bottling plant will play a major role in catering to the massive increase in demand of LPG from 1.06 Lakhs/Month in 2014 to 2.06 Lakhs/Month in 2019, in these 11 Districts.