The Hindu Business Line : 5-mt crude buffer at Vizag, Mangalore: Naik

The Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr Ram Naik, shaking hands with the Minister of State for Rural Development, Mr U.V Krishnam Raju, after laying the foundation stone for LPG cavern project in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. — C.V. Subrahmanyam.

Visakhapatnam , Feb. 19

THE Union Government has taken a decision to build strategic buffer reserves of five million tonnes of crude at Mangalore on the west coast and Visakhapatnam on the east coast in underground caverns to take care of about 15 days' imports, according to the Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr Ram Naik.

After laying the foundation stone for the Rs 333-crore underground LPG cavern project here on Thursday, Mr Naik said that the project would be launched shortly and it would cost Rs 1,650 crore for the construction of storage facilities and Rs 5,000 crore for the cost of crude.

Referring to the LPG cavern project, he said that it was the first of its kind in the country and it had been delayed for sometime due to "certain objections raised by the so-called environmentalists." But finally those objections had been cleared and it had got under way, he said.

The Minister expressed confidence that there would be no time overruns or cost overruns in the implementation of the project and it would be completed, as scheduled by July 2006. He said that it was being set up by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Total SA of France and it was a 50:50 joint venture. A company, South Asia LPG Company Pvt. Ltd, had been floated for the purpose. The LPG cavern project would cater to the needs of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

Mr Naik said an LPG pipeline had been laid from Visakhapatnam to Secunderabad by GAIL (India) Ltd at a cost of Rs 550 crore to carry the gas to consumption centres. "We can import LPG during the summer months when the rates are down in the international market, store it and use it later in the winter. Roughly, 60,000 tonnes of LPG can be stored here," he said.

Feel-good factor and LPG: The Minister said housewives in the country were feeling good because the NDA Government had given more gas connections during the past four years than that in the past 40 years. "The number of connections has more than doubled from 3.5 crore in 1999 to 7.3 crore today and we are giving connections on demand. Andhra Pradesh, in particular, has fared exceedingly well, with the Deepam scheme introduced by the Chief Minister, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, for rural women. During the four-year period, the number of connections has risen from 26.87 lakh to 82.04 lakh now," he said.

The Minister said that at present 38.5 per cent of the population has access to LPG and the aim of the Government is to take it to 50 per cent.

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