Two major projects are ready for inauguration in the first week of July by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the authorities are busy making preparations for the visit.

The first project — the long-delayed expansion project of the Visakhapatnam steel plant to take the capacity of the plant from 3 million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes — is the most important one.

Earlier this week, Union Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar visited the steel plant, held discussions with the officials and reviewed arrangements for the PM’s visit.

He is said to have expressed dissatisfaction over the time and cost overruns and asked the steel plant authorities to stabilise the functioning of the new units as quickly as possible.

The second project — the underground rock cavern for strategic storage of crude — is ready with a capacity of 1.03 million tonnes.

It has been built by the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL), the special purpose vehicle floated by the Oil Industry Development Board.

It has two chambers — one for ISPRL with a capacity of one million tonnes and the second for the HPCL with a capacity of 0.3 million tonnes. The ISPRL has invested ₹1,038 crore on the project and the HPCL ₹265 crore.

Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan was here on Thursday to review the arrangements for the Prime Minister’s visit. He reviewed the work on the rock cavern project.

There is also an LPG underground cavern here with a capacity of 60,000 tonnes, built by the South Asia LPG Pvt Ltd, a joint venture of the HPCL and Total, a French company.

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