By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, May 18, 2018: Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) a Maharatna PSU under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas is setting up a LPG Bottling Plant at Barkhani village in Balangir district of Odisha, announced by BPCL.

Officials from BPCL including Mr Atul Kumar, Regional LPG Manager (East), Mr Manas Mohanty, Head Infrastructure T/F (East), Mr Dillip Kumar Mandal, Project Facilitator E&P, Mr. Sanjay Sharma, State Head LPG (Odisha), Mr Debashis Palit, State Head Retail (Odisha & Jharkhand) and Mr. S.S. Sundararajan, DGM (Brand & PR) addressed in a press conference held here on Friday.

BPCL is already having a LPG Bottling Plant at Khurda.

For BPCL, the new plant that is going to be constructed at Balangir will be the second in the State of Odisha.

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 crore cylinders per annum. In addition to the proposed LPG Bottling Plant at Balangir, Oil Marketing Companies have plans to set up new plants at Bhubaneswar and Rayagada. Odisha will have a total of 7 LPG Bottling Plants once all the new plants are completed. The bottling capacity of these 7 bottling plants will be 4.06 crore cylinders per annum.

Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Skill Development & Entrepreneurship minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lay the foundation stone on May 21 in the presence of Thaawarchand Gehlot, Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, local Lok Sabha MP Kalikesh Narayan Singh Deo; Shri Narasingha Mishra, Leader of Opposition, Odisha Legislative Assembly and Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo, MLA, Patnagarh.

LPG consumers in Odisha state were 20.22 lakh on 1.6.2014 has grown up to 62.17 lakhs on 1.5.2018 which is increase of customer base by 207.5% during this period. The demand for packed LPG in Odisha was 454.3 TMT last year which is expected to be 610 MT. by 2020.

BPCL has 15.37 lakhs customers who consume 78 lakh cylinders in a year. This consumption is expected to increase to 105 lakh 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 Balangir was chosen for locating the plant considering the logistics advantage of the location.

The LPG Plant at Balangir will be constructed in the village Barkhani which is around 12 KMs from Balangir Railway station. The plant will be spread over 23 acres and will have the capacity to produce 42 lakh cylinders per year. The plant is expected to be operational by March 2020.

Balangir Plant once commissioned shall be supplying LPG cylinders to the consumers in 14 districts of Odisha namely: Balangir, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Sonepur Koraput, Malkangiri, Nowrangpur, Boudh, Kandhamal, Raygada and Nuapada.