The Hindu Business Line : Vizag LPG cavern to be commissioned this week

Visakhapatnam, Dec. 24 The 60,000-tonne capacity liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cavern storage facility here will be commissioned later this week, as the very large gas carrier from Saudi Arabia - 39,000-tonne capacity “Maharishi Bharadwaj” of Varun Shipping - started unloading the gas in the sunken ship jetty in the outer harbour of Visakhapatnam port from Monday.

It was the first time such a large vessel had entered the country with LPG and currently the gas was being sent to the bottling plant of the HPCL-Visakha refinery, said Mr P. Dwarakanath, Chief Executive Officer of the South Asia LPG Company Private Ltd. After the completion of the ongoing “vapour gasing test” of the cavern in the next few days, the LPG delivered would be filled in the cavern and it would be commissioned.

Complete discharge

He said it would take a few days for the complete discharge of the gas from the ship. The cavern was nearing its final stages of testing as the cavern acceptance test and pressure test by filling it up with water had been successfully completed. The SALPG wanted to ensure it was perfect in all aspects. The cavern, the first of its kind in South and South-East Asia, was set up by the SALPG, a 50:50 joint venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Total, a French oil major.

He said the Rs 333-crore project had come up near the harbour channel in the vicinity of Dolphin’s Nose in the city. The foundation for the project was laid on February 19, 2004. The cavern with a volume of 1,23,600 cubic metres, had been dug up under a solid hard rock to store LPG at as low as 162 metres below mean sea level.

The storage facility was made up of two caverns of size measuring 19 metres in height, 20 m in diameter and 160 m in length, he explained.