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Mr Ram Naik, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, inaugurating Hindustan Petroleum Corporation's Mangalore-Hassan-Bangalore pipeline at Hoskote on Saturday. Also seen are (from left) Mr B.N. Bachegowda, MLA, Mr C.K. Jaffer Sharief, MP, Mr R.V. Deshpande, Karnataka Minister for Large & Medium Scale Industries, and Mr M.S. Srinivasan, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. — V.K.Varadarajan

Bangalore , Oct. 11

TAKING the cue from the successful execution of the 363-km Mangalore-Hassan-Bangalore (MHB) petroleum products carrier pipeline, the Government is planning to encourage massive investments by the private and public sectors for setting up a national gas grids for transporting petroleum products across the country.

With six companies, including Reliance Industries Ltd and Essar Oil Ltd, having shown interest in construction of product pipelines, the Government is currently fine-tuning the regulatory issues for expediting the approvals.

Indicating this here at a press conference here on Saturday, the Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr Ram Naik, said pending passage of the Petroleum Regulatory Bill, the Petroleum Ministry would assume the role of the regulatory in deciding issues of approval and rates for common usage of the infrastructure by the oil companies.

Under a draft policy on petroleum products pipeline on common user principle framed last year, the Government had received expression of interest from Reliance for developing pipelines from Jamnagar to Patiala covering a length of 1,580 km at a cost of Rs 1,640 core.

Another pipeline is Jamnagar-Kanpur covering a length of 2,540 km at Rs 1,780 crore, while a few others are connecting Goa-Hyderabad, Chennai-Bangalore, Kakinada-Vijayawada and Haldia-Ranchi pipelines. Yet another pipeline in the northern region traversing 1,640 km is also learnt to have been planned by a public sector oil company.

Mr Naik, who was speaking after inaugurating the Rs 666.67-crore Petronet-MHB pipeline from Mangalore Refineries and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), said the project was expected to be cost-effective and prevent delivery of products in pure form without adulteration and also prevent any environment pollution.

While commending Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Petronet India Ltd, he said the project would result in tremendous saving in transportation cost by reducing the distance by more than half from 820 km rail or road routes used hitherto for carrying the petroleum products from MRPL, Mangalore.

Earlier, at the inaugural function, Mr Naik also urged the Karnataka Government not only to restore the exemption of entry tax (withdrawn from April this year) on crude exports to Phase I of the project but also include the facility for Phase II. The exemption for Phase I is available for sale of products to HPCL only. In the deregulated scenario, other marketing companies such as BPCL, ICO and IBP also needed to be include, Mr Naik said.

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