Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday laid the foundation stone of a ₹103- crore LPG bottling plant of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) in Odisha’s Bolangir district.

The bottling plant will be set up at Barkhani. Expected to be commissioned by March 2020, the new plant spread over 23 acres, will have a bottling capacity of 42 lakh cylinders per year, official sources said.

“Establishment of the second bottling plant of BPCL will be a step towards fulfilling Prime Minister’s vision of Purvodaya: A prosperous East for a new India. The new bottling plant will cater to the needs of people of 14 districts of the State,” Pradhan said.

BPCL has another bottling plant at Khurda in Odisha.

The Bolangir plant will supply LPG cylinders to consumers in Bolangir, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Kalahandi, Sonepur, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur, Boudh, Kandhamal, Rayagada and Nuapada districts, the sources added.

Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Thawaar Chand Gehlot and senior BJP leader KV Singhdeo were also present on the occasion.

D Rajkumar CMD, BPCL, in his welcome address said that with the LPG demand growing in the State, the need for putting up a new bottling plant was felt.

BPCL has 15.37 lakh customers in the State, who use around 78 lakh cylinders per year. The consumption is expected to increase to 105 lakh cylinders by 2020, company officials said.

LPG consumers in Odisha have gone up to 62.17 lakh as on May 1 compared with 20.22 lakh as of June 1, 2014. The demand for bottled LPG in the State was 454.3 TMT (thousand metric) tonnes last year and is expected to go up to 610 TMT by 2020, they added.

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