Oil pipelines proposed along rail tracks

If the government agrees, pipelines carrying crude oil, petroleum products and gas could run alongside railway tracks.

State-owned Indian Oil Corporation has made this proposal to tide over the numerous hurdles oil companies face while laying pipelines.

"We have proposed revenue sharing where both the railways and the oil companies can benefit. The idea is to use railway land for a fee to lay the pipelines," said U K Dhoot, general manager, project monitoring, Indian Oil. Dhoot was talking about challenges in operation and project implementation of hydrocarbon pipelines at the India-Tech conference in Mumbai.

Laying pipelines in India, say companies, is a lengthy process. It takes years for all relevant permissions to come in. Approvals from various government departments take over three to four years, forcing companies to miss deadlines.

Indian Oil has, on behalf of the industry, submitted a report to the petroleum ministry, asking the government to rope in Indian Railways for land along its tracks to build an energy grid. "We have requested the government for a conducive policy because India's pipeline network for petroleum products is very small," Dhoot said.

He added while oil was now being transported by road, rail and coastal ships, these did not have the capacity to meet growing demand and a pipeline network would be an economical solution.

Indian Oil Corporation has 12,200 km of pipelines to and from its 11 refineries. These refineries can refine 65 million tonnes of petroleum products a year but only 36.6 million tonnes are carried by pipelines and the company is laying another 7,000 km. Dhoot, however, said there could be a conflict of interest with the railways, which now transport a big share of petroleum products for Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation.

According to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell in the oil ministry, India has 9,460 km of crude oil pipelines and 14,083 km of product pipelines.