Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has started regular import of petroleum products via pipelines from India's Motihari to Amlekhgunj in Bara, in a significant move that is expected to reduce leakage and also save transportation cost.

According to the Amlekhgunj-based Regional Office of NOC, the state-owned oil monopoly started importing petrol and kerosene using the pipeline after the completion of the work of the Cross-Border Petroleum Pipeline Expansion Project. Until now, the NOC only used to import diesel through the pipeline due to lack of storage facilities. The NOC started importing diesel from September 11, 2019 in the first phase.

Pralayankar Acharya, Chief of Nepal Oil Corporation Madhesh Province Office, Amlekhgunj, said that the entire work of petroleum pipeline expansion has now been completed and the regular import of all three types of petroleum products from the pipeline has been started since a few days.

"Petrol and kerosene have already been imported from the pipeline," Chief Acharya said, "Now we have started formally distributing the imported petrol from the pipeline to the depots in major cities in the country."

Under the pipeline expansion project, the Indian Oil Corporation has constructed two petrol tanks with a capacity of 4,100 kiloliters, two transmix tanks with a capacity of 250 kiloliters, 24 fully automatic loading way-refillers for transporting petrol, pump house and laboratory at the NOC’s depot in Amlekhgunj.

Similarly, the 'Fire Fighting System', the oil and water separation (OWS) system and the PMCC Cell were also upgraded under the same project.

Likhita Infrastructure was contracted to complete the construction of the entire infrastructure by 2023. Chief Acharya said that the work of expanding the pipeline was, however, completed only a few days ago due to various reasons.

Acharya stated that all kinds of fuel including diesel, petrol and kerosene can be imported through the same pipeline. Earlier, it was not possible due to the lack of storage facility.

With the completion of this project, the storage capacity of diesel at Amlekhgunj depot now stands at 24,840 kiloliters and the storage capacity of petrol is 16,630 kiloliters.