Indian Oil Petronas Pvt Ltd. (IPPL) will expand its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) production capacity to 23.04 lakh tonnes per annum at its Athipattu village plant in Tiruvallur district. This expansion will provide for increased availability of auto gas and domestic LPG to residents of Chennai.
At present, the IPPL plant supplies 400 tonnes of LPG a day to the Indane bottling plant that is located adjacent to it. The IPPL import/export terminal was commissioned at Ennore in 2012 to increase LPG availability and eliminate transportation cost by bullet trucks. Butane and propane are received by ship in a refrigerated state at Ennore Port and transferred and stored at the terminal where they are blended and then transferred to loading stations for other bottling plants and the neighbouring Indane bottling plant, explained sources.
The terminal has a capacity of 5.76 lakh tonnes per annum currently and operates on single shift. In the proposed expansion, the shifts would be increased to three and the plant would work 24 hours instead of the present eight hour shift.
Four more loading, filling bays would be installed at a cost of ₹2 crore. This would be in addition to the 12 existing bays. The terminal can handle up to 12,00,000 tonnes per annum in case of future needs. It already has a massive parking area of 37,000 sq ft to accommodate 300 bullet trucks, cooling tower system, RO plant, boiler, fuel storage systems, sewage treatment plant and rainwater harvesting pond to support the process operations, the sources said.
Public hearing
Recently, a public hearing was held at Tiruvallur seeking opinion from residents for the plant expansion.
Residents of Athipet and Athipet Pudhunagar wanted improvement of basic infrastructure and also wanted the plant to be more proactive to their needs, officials said.
